Stacks Wizard

Wizard

A wizard is a bash script that walks a human, step by step, through a manual procedure that is tedious to do by hand and tedious to re-explain to an agent every time. It opens each URL, says exactly what to click and copy, captures the values, writes them where they belong, confirms before anything irreversible, and shows how many stages are left.

The UX is already solved by scripts/template.sh: stage-by-stage progress, confirmation gates, cross-platform URL opening including WSL, hidden entry for secrets, idempotent .env upserts, gh secret and gh variable writes, and a closing summary. Your job is only to scope the procedure and author its stages. Everything above the STAGES marker is identical in every wizard, and that consistency is the point. Never hand-edit it.

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

Credit: adapted from Matt Pocock's wizard skill (MIT), https://github.com/mattpocock/skills. The template library is his, unchanged except for the example stage.

When this is the right tool

Reach for it the moment you hit a step only the human can take. In a Stacks project that is a short and predictable list:

• AWS access for buddy deploy and buddy cloud, and the IAM permissions behind them.
• Domains and DNS: buddy domains:purchase, registrar nameserver changes, the delegation that has to happen at the registrar rather than in Route53.
• Email: SES domain verification, DKIM records, moving out of the sandbox, the port 25 request.
• CI secrets: every secrets.* and vars.* reference in .github/workflows/* is a value the wizard should produce.
• Server provisioning: a Hetzner or other provider token, an SSH key added to the account, the first-boot steps.
• Payments: Stripe keys and webhook endpoints.

If the agent could just do it itself, it should. This is for where a human is genuinely in the loop.

Process

1. Scope the procedure

Work out every manual step the human must take and every value captured along the way. Read the repo first, do not ask cold:

• .env, .env.example, .env.*, and config/services.ts for what the app already expects.
• config/cloud.ts, config/dns.ts, config/email.ts for what the deploy targets.
• .github/workflows/* for every secret and variable CI reads.
• The relevant skill (stacks-deploy, stacks-cloud, stacks-dns, stacks-email) for which steps the CLI already automates, so the wizard covers only the gap.

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 is written (.env, a GitHub secret, both, or nowhere, since some stages are pure actions), and (c) whether it is secret and so needs hidden entry.

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 the value is shown, which variable it fills. For example "Route53 console, Hosted zones, pick the domain, copy the four NS records".

Where you do not 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 scripts/template.sh to the target path. Replace the example stage with one stage per step, in dependency order. Set TOTAL_STAGES to the number you wrote. Use the library helpers: stage, say, step, note, warn, open_url, ask, ask_secret, write_env, set_secret, set_var, pause, confirm.

Hold the bar the template sets:

• Open the URL before asking for its value.
• ask_secret for anything secret.
• write_env every persisted value.
• set_secret only the values CI actually needs.
• confirm before anything irreversible.
• One focused task per stage, because each stage clears the screen and anything the human still needs must not have scrolled away.

In a Stacks project, finish with a stage that encrypts what you just wrote: ./buddy env:encrypt, and for a production file the matching buddy env:keypair / buddy env:rotate step. A wizard that leaves plaintext credentials in .env.production has done half a job. buddy env:check is the verification line for the closing stage.

4. Verify and hand off

• bash -n <script>, and shellcheck if it is available.
• chmod +x <script>.
• Do not 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 matches a secrets.* reference in CI exactly.
• Tell the user how to run it. If it is a repeatable setup path, commit it under scripts/ and link it from the README so the next person runs the script instead of asking an agent.

Downstream

Credentials in place? /stacks-deploy for the deploy workflow itself, and /stacks-guard before anything touches production.