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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.

email

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