# thought-machine/please

High-performance extensible build system for reproducible multi-language builds.

Repository: https://github.com/thought-machine/please
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/please
Homepage: https://please.build
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: build, build-tool, build-system, multi-language, monorepo, bazel, pants, buck, please-build
Last push: 2026-08-26T18:25:08+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 99, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3865, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 7, "gap_med": 11.5, "n_releases_24m": 37}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2608, forks 220 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:04.208029+00:00)

## What it is
Please is a high-performance, extensible, cross-language build system written in Go, emphasizing hermetic, reproducible builds with aggressive content-hash-based caching and parallel task execution. It supports many languages via plugins and is well suited to large monorepos, offering build, test, and run commands through a single CLI.

## Use cases
- build a multi-language monorepo with one tool
- speed up builds with hermetic incremental caching
- find a faster alternative to bazel or buck
- run tests and builds reproducibly in CI
- define custom build rules for any technology
- share a remote build cache across a team

## When to choose
- you have a large multi-language monorepo needing fast, reproducible builds
- you want a lightweight, fast-starting alternative to Bazel without JVM startup overhead
- you need hermetic builds with content-hash caching and parallelism
- you want to extend build logic with a purpose-built build language and plugins

## When to avoid
- you have a simple single-language project where native tooling (go build, pip, cargo) suffices
- your team already standardizes on Bazel and needs its ecosystem
- you need Windows support, which is not actively supported
- you rely on tooling or integrations specific to another build system

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: build-tool, cli, testing, caching, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: bsd, cli, go
- tags: build-system, monorepo, reproducible-builds, hermetic-builds, multi-language, bazel-alternative, remote-caching, command-line, devops, automation, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- thought-machine/please (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:04.208029+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 2026-08-30T02:20:55.920319+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/thought-machine/please (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:04.208029+00:00, sha 13caf6d81ed6)
  - homepage: https://please.build (fetched 2026-08-29T10:03:48.714814+00:00, sha 6ef70b605939)
  - site_page: https://please.build/quickstart.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:03:48.724116+00:00, sha 896f446b155e)
  - site_page: https://please.build/config.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:03:48.726274+00:00, sha eafb5b4cfbfa)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.