# cruft/cruft

Allows you to maintain all the necessary cruft for packaging and building projects separate from the code you intentionally write. Built on-top of, and fully compatible with, CookieCutter.

Repository: https://github.com/cruft/cruft
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cruft
Homepage: https://cruft.github.io/cruft/
Language: Python
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: python, cruft, python3, cookiecutter, boilerplate, templating, quickly, instantly
Last push: 2024-12-25T14:07:35+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2537, "days_push": 616, "days_rel": 616, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1585, forks 101 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:07.626458+00:00)

## What it is
Cruft is a Python CLI tool that creates projects from Cookiecutter templates and keeps them in sync with template updates over time. It is fully compatible with existing Cookiecutter templates and can validate template drift in CI pipelines.

## Use cases
- scaffold a new python project from a cookiecutter template
- keep project boilerplate in sync with template updates
- check if a project is using the latest template version in CI
- update multiple projects when their shared template changes
- create projects from templates with interactive prompts

## When to choose
- you maintain many projects generated from the same Cookiecutter template
- you want automated updates of boilerplate as the template evolves
- you need CI checks that projects stay in sync with their template

## When to avoid
- you only need one-off project generation without ongoing sync
- your templates are not Cookiecutter-based
- you need general-purpose templating beyond project scaffolding

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: cli, templating, boilerplate, build-tool, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, web-development
- platform: python, cli, cross-platform
- tags: cookiecutter, project-templates, template-sync, scaffolding, project-scaffolding, automation

## Member repositories
- cruft/cruft (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:07.626458+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:55:31.817135+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/cruft/cruft (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:07.626458+00:00, sha 0c7be8da6c30)
  - homepage: https://cruft.github.io/cruft/ (fetched 2026-08-29T11:26:13.493147+00:00, sha 21509fb3f79f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.