starterit

Starterit is an open-source starter kit and command-line interface (CLI) designed to bootstrap new software projects. It provides a collection of templates, scaffolding, and best-practice defaults to speed up initial setup for web, mobile, and backend services.

Origin and purpose: Launched by a community of developers in 2022, Starterit aims to reduce boilerplate and enforce consistent project structure across teams. It emphasizes modularity and configurability while offering opinionated defaults for common stacks.

Features: A library of templates for popular frameworks and languages; a pluggable plugin system; a CLI to create, configure, and scaffold projects; built-in linting, testing, and CI/CD templates; environment-aware scaffolding; template customization through JSON/YAML manifests.

Architecture: Core CLI delegates to a template engine and plugin registry. Templates are stored in a central repository with versioned presets; plugins add generators for new stacks, deployment targets, and tooling.

Usage: Install via npm, yarn, or a platform-specific binary; commands include starterit create <project-name> and starterit add-plugin <plugin>. Templates guide prompts for language, framework, and features.

Reception: In practice, Starterit has been adopted by bootcamps, agencies, and OSS maintainers seeking standardization. Critics note that its opinionated defaults can be constraining for specialized projects.

See also: project bootstrapping, template engines, CLI tools, boilerplate code.