peterbourgon/ff

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1442 stars · 65 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

ff is a Go library providing a flags-first approach to program configuration, where every config parameter is defined as a flag that can be parsed from command-line args, environment variables, and config files. It includes ff.Command for declaratively building multi-command CLI applications in the style of kubectl or docker.

Use cases

• parse flags from command-line args, env vars, and config files in Go
• build a kubectl-style multi-command CLI in Go
• show complete config surface via -h help output
• support short and long flag names with enum and repeatable flag types
• load configuration from a plain-text config file

When to choose

• you're writing a Go CLI and want flags as the single source of configuration truth
• you need layered config from args, env vars, and files with one library
• you want a declarative way to build subcommand-based CLI tools

When to avoid

• you need complex config schemas with nested structures or validation beyond flags
• you're not using Go
• you prefer struct-tag or YAML-first configuration approaches

Facets

library · maturity active

configuration-management cli developer-tools developer-tools backend go cli cross-platform flags config-files env-vars command-line-applications flag-parsing command-line

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="peterbourgon/ff")