Prompt Arguments¶
When running the copier copy
command, you'll be prompted with several questions to configure your project. Here's what each option does:
author
Your full name. This will be used in documentation, license files, and package metadata.
Your email address. Used for package metadata and contact information.
author_github_handle
Your GitHub username or organization. This is used to set up repository URLs and documentation links.
project_description
A short description of your project. This appears in README files, package metadata, and documentation.
project_features
This is a multiselect option where you can choose one or more project types:
python_data_science
: Sets up a Python data science environment with:- Polars, PyArrow, Seaborn, NumPy for data analysis
- Quarto notebooks for reproducible research
-
Modern Python tooling (uv, ruff, ty)
-
r_data_science
: Sets up an R data science environment with: - Tidyverse libraries (ggplot2, dplyr, etc.)
- Quarto notebooks
- Modern R tooling (pak, air, radian)
-
Fast package installation via P3M
-
python_package
: Creates a Python package with: - Build tools (hatchling)
- Testing framework (pytest, tox)
- Documentation (MkDocs with Material theme)
- Publishing workflow (PyPI)
You can select multiple features! Here are some common combinations:
Python data science project:
project_features: ["python_data_science"]
R data science project:
project_features: ["r_data_science"]
Polyglot data science project:
project_features: ["python_data_science", "r_data_science"]
Python package for distribution:
project_features: ["python_package"]
Hybrid python project (data science + package):
project_features: ["python_data_science", "python_package"]
use_github
true
or false
. When enabled, this adds:
- GitHub Actions workflows for CI/CD
- Issue and pull request templates
- Automated testing and deployment
- Documentation publishing to GitHub Pages
open_source_license
Choose a license for your project. Options:
- MIT license
- Permissive, widely used
- BSD license
- Similar to MIT, with additional attribution requirements
- ISC license
- Very permissive, minimal text
- Apache Software License 2.0
- Includes patent protection
- GNU General Public License v3
- Copyleft, requires derivative works to be open source
- Not open source
- No license file generated
aws
true
or false
. When enabled, includes:
- AWS CLI configuration
- Boto3 for Python projects
- AWS-related development tools and examples
Computed Variables¶
The template automatically computes several values based on your choices:
project_name: Automatically set to the directory name you specify when running copier
project_slug: Automatically generated from project_name by converting to lowercase and replacing hyphens with underscores. This is used for:
- Python package names
- Import statements: from project_slug import module
- Directory structures