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 secrets), confirms at every stage, and shows how many stages are left. It might configure third-party services, 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, gh secret/gh variable writes, and a closing summary, all bound to one project and one GitHub repository. 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. Wherever it's saved, it's bound to the project it was generated for: it refuses to run from outside PROJECT_ROOT and writes only that project's env file and GITHUB_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: committed templates such as .env.example, README, docker-compose*, framework config, and .github/workflows/* (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.

Never read .env, .env.local, .env.production, or any other file that holds real values: that copies existing secrets into your context. The wizard handles those values on the human's machine instead: on a re-run, ask and ask_secret offer the value already in the env file (Enter keeps it) without showing it. If you need to know which keys a real env file already has, ask the user for the key names, never the values.

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 GitHub secret, both, or nowhere; some stages are pure actions), and (c) whether it's secret (hidden entry) or public. The user has also confirmed the wizard's targets: the project root (pwd -P in it), its env file (a regular file or none yet; the wizard refuses a symlink or any other kind of file there), and, if anything goes to GitHub, the repository as OWNER/NAME (gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner in that root; HOST/OWNER/NAME for one not on github.com).

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. Keep every stage and setting inside run_wizard and the file's last line, run_wizard "$@"; exit, as is: bash then reads the whole wizard before the first prompt, so an edit to the file mid-run can't break the run. Use the library helpers: stage, say/step, open_url, ask/ask_secret, write_env, set_secret/set_var, pause/confirm. Set TOTAL_STAGES to the number of stages you wrote, and PROJECT_ROOT, ENV_FILE, and GITHUB_REPO to the targets confirmed in step 1 (GITHUB_REPO="" when nothing goes to GitHub). A wizard committed to the repo derives PROJECT_ROOT from its own location instead, e.g. "$(cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")/.." && pwd -P)" for one in scripts/; never derive it from where the wizard is started.

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. Call write_env for a value before set_secret or set_var sends it to GitHub: write_env refuses a value containing ', \, $, or a control character (.env loaders read those differently), and that refusal must stop the wizard before GitHub gets a value the local file doesn't hold. A line ask can't read back (such as KEY="..." or export KEY=...) is kept on Enter: write_env, set_secret, and set_var then write and send nothing for it, and only a typed value replaces it. 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, and don't set your own EXIT, INT, or TERM trap: the library's removes the run's env-file lock and temp file.

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: from inside the project root, since it refuses to run anywhere else. If a run is ever killed outright (kill -9, power loss), remove the env file's .lock directory and any .env.XXXXXX temp file beside it before the next run. 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.