🚀 Fastplate

Fastplate is a CLI tool that scaffolds production-ready FastAPI projects with Tailwind CSS, DaisyUI, and Jinja2 templates in seconds.

✨ Features

• 🏗️ FastAPI backend with async support and automatic OpenAPI docs
• 🎨 Tailwind CSS v4 + DaisyUI for beautiful, responsive UIs
• 📄 Jinja2 server-side templating with component-based structure
• 📦 uv for fast Python dependency management
• 🐳 Docker & docker-compose ready for deployment
• ⚡ Hot reload for both backend and CSS during development
• 🔧 Makefile with common development commands

📦 Installation

With uv (recommended)

uv add fastplate

With pip

pip install fastplate

With pipx (global install)

pipx install fastplate

🚀 Quick Start

Using uv (recommended)

# Create a new project directory and add fastplate
mkdir my-app && cd my-app
uv init
uv add fastplate

# Initialize the project
uv run fastplate init --name "My App"

# Start development
make dev          # FastAPI server at http://localhost:8000
make npm-watch    # Tailwind CSS watcher (in another terminal)

Using pip/pipx

# Create in a new directory
fastplate init ./my-app --name "My App"
cd my-app

# Start development
make dev
make npm-watch

📖 CLI Reference

Fastplate uses a command-based CLI structure.

Commands

Command	Description
init	Initialize a new FastAPI + Tailwind CSS project

fastplate init

Scaffolds a new project with the full FastAPI + Tailwind CSS stack.

fastplate init [OPTIONS] [PATH]
# or with uv
uv run fastplate init [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Arguments

Argument	Description	Default
PATH	Directory to create the project in	. (current directory)

Options

Option	Short	Description
--name TEXT	-n	Project name (prompts if not provided)
--skip-install		Skip automatic dependency installation
--force	-f	Overwrite existing project files
--help		Show help message and exit

Examples

# Interactive mode - prompts for project name
uv run fastplate init

# Specify project name directly
uv run fastplate init --name "My Awesome App"

# Create in a specific directory
uv run fastplate init ./projects/my-app --name my-app

# Skip automatic dependency installation
uv run fastplate init --skip-install

# Overwrite existing project files
uv run fastplate init --force

# Short flags
uv run fastplate init -n "My App" -f

What it does

1. Copies template - Scaffolds the full project structure into the target directory
2. Replaces placeholders - Injects your project name into config files (pyproject.toml, templates, etc.)
3. Installs Python deps - Runs uv sync to install FastAPI and dependencies
4. Installs npm deps - Runs npm install in frontend/ for Tailwind CSS

Use --skip-install if you want to handle dependency installation manually.

📁 Generated Project Structure

my-app/
├── app/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── main.py              # FastAPI application entry point
│   ├── api/                  # API routes (REST endpoints)
│   ├── core/
│   │   ├── config.py        # Settings & configuration
│   │   └── middleware.py    # Custom middleware
│   ├── models/              # Database models (SQLAlchemy, etc.)
│   ├── schemas/             # Pydantic schemas for validation
│   ├── services/            # Business logic layer
│   └── views/               # HTML view routes (Jinja2)
│       └── index.py
├── frontend/
│   ├── package.json         # npm dependencies (Tailwind)
│   ├── static/
│   │   └── css/
│   │       ├── input.css    # Tailwind source
│   │       └── output.css   # Compiled CSS
│   └── templates/
│       ├── base.html        # Base template with layout
│       ├── components/      # Reusable Jinja2 components
│       │   ├── card.html
│       │   └── navbar.html
│       └── pages/           # Page templates
│           └── index.html
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── Makefile                 # Development commands
├── pyproject.toml           # Python project config
└── README.md                # Project-specific docs

🛠️ Development Commands

The generated project includes a Makefile with these commands:

make dev          # Start FastAPI dev server with hot reload
make run          # Start production server
make npm-watch    # Watch & compile Tailwind CSS
make npm-build    # Build minified CSS for production
make docker-up    # Start with Docker Compose
make docker-down  # Stop Docker containers
make clean        # Remove generated files

🎨 Styling with Tailwind & DaisyUI

The template uses Tailwind CSS v4 with DaisyUI components.

Edit frontend/static/css/input.css to customize your styles:

@import "tailwindcss";
@plugin "daisyui";

/* Your custom styles here */

Run make npm-watch during development to auto-compile CSS changes.

🐳 Docker Deployment

# Build and run with Docker Compose
make docker-up

# Or manually
docker build -t my-app .
docker run -p 8000:8000 my-app

📋 Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• Node.js 18+ (for Tailwind CSS)
• uv (recommended) or pip

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.