CLI to VS Code Tasks Generator

Generate .vscode/tasks.json entries from Python CLI commands defined in a repository.

Instructions

Follow these steps exactly:

Step 1 — Discover the CLI module

Find the CLI entry point in the repo. Search for files that define CLI commands:

1. Look for cli.py files anywhere in the repo (**/cli.py).
2. If none found, look for __main__.py, main.py, or files importing typer, click, or argparse.
3. If multiple candidates exist, ask the user which file to use.

Step 2 — Parse commands

Read the CLI module and extract all commands. Identify:

• Framework: typer, click, argparse, or plain functions.
• Command names: function names or explicit name overrides (e.g., @app.command("list")).
• Arguments: required positional args with their types and help text.
• Options: optional flags with defaults and help text.
• Docstrings: the one-line description of each command.

Also determine the invocation prefix — how the CLI is run:

1. Check pyproject.toml for [project.scripts] entries (e.g., raven = "raven.main:app" means the prefix is uv run raven).
2. If no script entry, check if there is a __main__.py (prefix: uv run python -m <package>).
3. If neither, fall back to uv run python <path/to/cli.py>.

Step 3 — Ask the user

Present all discovered commands using AskUserQuestion with multiSelect: true. For each command show:

• label: the command name
• description: the docstring or a summary of what it does

Let the user select which commands to generate tasks for.

Step 4 — Generate tasks.json

For each selected command, create a VS Code task object:

{
  "label": "<prefix> <command>",
  "type": "shell",
  "command": "<full invocation>",
  "group": "build",
  "problemMatcher": []
}

Rules for generating tasks:

• Required arguments (positional args without defaults): add "${input:<argName>}" placeholder and a corresponding entry in the top-level "inputs" array with "type": "promptString" and "description" from the arg's help text.
• Optional flags with no default or with a meaningful default: do NOT include them in the base command. Instead, if a command has options, create a second task variant suffixed with (with options) that includes all options as ${input:...} placeholders.
• Boolean flags (like --dry-run): use "type": "pickString" input with choices ["", "--flag-name"].
• If .vscode/tasks.json already exists, read it first and merge — do not overwrite existing tasks. Append new tasks and inputs, skipping duplicates by label.
• If .vscode/tasks.json does not exist, create it with "version": "2.0.0".

Step 5 — Confirm and write

Show the user the generated tasks.json content, then write it to .vscode/tasks.json.

Example output

For a typer CLI with pyproject.toml entry raven = "raven.main:app" and commands list, run --dry-run --output FILE:

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "raven list",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "uv run raven list",
      "group": "build",
      "problemMatcher": []
    },
    {
      "label": "raven run",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "uv run raven run",
      "group": "build",
      "problemMatcher": []
    },
    {
      "label": "raven run (with options)",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "uv run raven run ${input:runDryRun} ${input:runOutput}",
      "group": "build",
      "problemMatcher": []
    }
  ],
  "inputs": [
    {
      "id": "runDryRun",
      "description": "Include --dry-run flag?",
      "type": "pickString",
      "options": ["", "--dry-run"]
    },
    {
      "id": "runOutput",
      "description": "Save digests to JSON file (leave empty to skip)",
      "type": "promptString",
      "default": ""
    }
  ]
}