@study-lenses/create

CLI scaffolder that generates new @study-lenses packages from the standard template, replacing all placeholders with user-provided values.

Pedagogical Purpose

Neutral infrastructure: This package generates the boilerplate for new @study-lenses packages. It makes no pedagogical decisions — those belong in the packages it creates.

Who Is This For

Primary — Educational tool developers: Creating new @study-lenses packages. Instead of forking sl-starter and manually finding/replacing ~15 placeholders across 8+ files, run one command and get a correct package on first try.

Install

Not installed as a dependency. Run directly:

npm create @study-lenses
# or
npx @study-lenses/create

Quick Start

npm create @study-lenses
# Package name (e.g., utils-normalize): utils-normalize
# Description: Config normalization utilities
# Author (@codeschoolinabox):
#
# Creating @study-lenses/utils-normalize in /path/to/sl-utils-normalize...
# Done!

The CLI asks three questions, then generates sl-{name}/ with all files from the standard template, all placeholders replaced, git initialized, and dependencies installed.

Design Principles

What this package provides

• Generates a complete @study-lenses package directory from the standard template
• Replaces all placeholder tokens (CHANGEME, @study-lenses/CHANGEME, OWNER/REPO, OWNER, REPO, PACKAGE_DESCRIPTION, [YEAR], [NAME])
• Initializes git and runs npm install
• Validates package name against npm naming rules

What this package does NOT do

• No --update mode (re-generating templates in existing packages is deferred)
• No interactive file selection (all template files are always generated)
• No custom template support (uses the single standard template)

API Reference

Generated from TSDoc comments in source. Run npm run docs locally, or see the hosted API docs.

Architecture

The CLI is a three-step pipeline:

1. Collect Input (collect-input.ts) — collects package name, description, author via readline
2. Derive (derive-variables.ts) — computes all template variables from the three answers
3. Generate (generate.ts) — walks templates/ directory, replaces tokens, writes files

Templates are shipped as real files in the templates/ directory (not embedded strings). Token replacement uses String.prototype.replaceAll() in a specific order to avoid substring collisions (e.g., @study-lenses/CHANGEME before bare CHANGEME).

See DEV.md for full architecture, conventions, and the TDD workflow.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and DEV.md.

License

MIT © 2026 @codeschoolinabox