# rails/thor

Thor is a toolkit for building powerful command-line interfaces.

Repository: https://github.com/rails/thor
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/thor
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-07-06T16:18:21+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 75/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 91, release rhythm 41, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6692, "days_push": 58, "days_rel": 239, "gap_med": 172, "n_releases_24m": 2}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5263, forks 547 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:13.853744+00:00)

## What it is
Thor is a Ruby toolkit for building self-documenting command-line utilities, handling option parsing and usage banners with a Rake-like syntax. It can also serve as an alternative to Rake as a build tool.

## Use cases
- build a CLI tool in Ruby
- parse command line options and arguments
- generate usage/help banners automatically
- replace Rake for task automation
- create self-documenting command-line utilities

## When to choose
- you are writing a Ruby command-line application or generator
- you want Rake-like task syntax with better argument parsing
- you need self-documenting CLI help output

## When to avoid
- you need a CLI framework in a non-Ruby language
- your tool processes untrusted application user input (Thor is designed as a system tool, not for handling user-supplied input)
- you only need simple shell scripts without Ruby

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: cli, parser, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: ruby, cli, cross-platform
- tags: command-line-interfaces, rake-alternative, option-parsing, self-documenting, ruby-gem, command-line, automation

## Member repositories
- rails/thor (main) score 75

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:13.853744+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 2026-08-29T17:59:30.527749+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/rails/thor (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:13.853744+00:00, sha d1ec42115bcc)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.