wizard

Wizard

A wizard is a bash script that walks a human, step by step, through a manual procedure that's tedious to do by hand and tedious to re-explain to an AI every time. It opens each URL, says exactly what to click and copy, captures the values, writes them where they belong (.env, GitHub/Gitea/Forgejo secrets), confirms at every stage, and shows how many stages are left. It might configure third-party services, provision credentials, run a one-off migration, or move the project from one state to another.

The delightful UX is already solved by template.sh — stage-by-stage progress, confirmation gates, cross-platform URL opening (including WSL), hidden secret entry, idempotent .env upserts, CI secret writes with graceful degradation (GitHub gh first, then Gitea/Forgejo Actions via tea api), and a closing summary. Your job is only to scope the procedure and author its stages. The library above the STAGES marker is identical in every wizard; that consistency is the point — never hand-edit it.

A wizard is ephemeral by default — built for one run, saved to a scratch or scripts/ path, deleted when the job's done. Commit it only when the user wants a repeatable setup path that should live in the repo.

Process

1. Scope the procedure

Work out every manual step the human must take and every value that gets captured along the way. Read the repo first — don't ask cold:

• For setup: pyproject.toml, settings.py / settings/*.py, django-environ usage (.Env() calls, environ.Env() defaults), .env*, compose*.yml, README, and CI config (.github/workflows/*, .gitlab-ci.yml, .gitea/workflows/* or actions/variables references) — every secrets.* / vars.* reference is a value the wizard must produce.
• For a migration or transition: the current state, the target state, and the irreversible actions between them.

Then show the user the ordered list of stages and the values each produces, and confirm — they may add, drop, or reorder.

Done when: every stage is named in order, and for each captured value you know (a) where the human gets it, (b) where it's written (.env, a CI secret, both, or nowhere — some stages are pure actions), and (c) whether it's secret (hidden entry) or public.

2. Map each stage's journey

For each stage, write the precise path a human follows: which URL to open, what to do there, where a value is shown, which variable it fills — e.g. "Dashboard → Developers → API keys → Reveal test key → copy". Where you don't actually know the current UI or the exact command, say so and ask the user or check the docs — never invent steps that may not exist.

Done when: every stage traces to concrete instructions a stranger could follow.

3. Author the wizard

Copy template.sh to the target path. Replace the example stage with one stage per step, in dependency order. Use the library helpers — stage, say/step, open_url, ask/ask_secret, write_env, set_secret/set_var, pause/confirm — and set TOTAL_STAGES to the number of stages you wrote.

Hold the bar the template sets: open the URL before asking for its value, use ask_secret for anything secret, write_env every persisted value, set_secret only the values CI actually needs, and confirm before any irreversible action. Each stage clears the screen so only the current step is visible — keep a stage to one focused task so nothing the human needs scrolls away. Don't touch the library above the marker.

4. Verify and hand off

• bash -n <script>; run shellcheck if available.
• chmod +x <script>.
• Don't run it end-to-end yourself — it opens browsers and blocks on human input. Trace it statically instead: every value from step 1 is captured and lands where step 1 said, and every set_secret name exactly matches a secrets.* reference in CI.
• Tell the user how to run it. If it's a repeatable setup path, commit it and link it from the README so the next person runs the script instead of asking an AI.

When to invoke (and when not to)

This skill is model-invoked: reach for it the moment you hit a step only a human can perform — provisioning infrastructure, setting up credentials or CI secrets, walking an unfamiliar third-party dashboard, a one-off migration or cutover. Non-trigger: do not invoke it for steps you can perform yourself. Work an agent can do, an agent should do; the wizard is for the clicks, approvals and dashboard trips you wouldn't hand to one. Keep that non-trigger — it's what stops this from firing constantly.