Typed command-line parsing, without the ceremony.
Declare your parameters once and get validated values at startup. No runtime reflection, no third-party dependencies.
implementation("org.draftcode:argot-core:0.1.2")import org.draftcode.argot.Arguments
class GreetArgs : Arguments(
programName = "greet",
description = "Print a friendly greeting.",
) {
val name: String by option("--name", "-n", help = "Who to greet").default("world")
val count: Int by option("--count", "-c", help = "How many times").int().default(1)
val loud: Boolean by flag("--loud", "-l", help = "Shout the greeting")
}
The same program, declared both ways, and the help screen Argot generates from it.
§ 01 — Why
Three promises, kept by the compiler.
- 01
Two styles, one engine
Plain Kotlin delegates, or annotate a data class and let a KSP processor write the parser. Both build the same specification and run the same engine, so behaviour and help output are identical.
- 02
Nothing at runtime
argot-core and argot-annotations depend only on the Kotlin standard library. KSP and KotlinPoet never reach your runtime classpath, and there is no classpath scan at startup.
- 03
Errors at compile time
Duplicate names, misplaced positionals and unsupported types are reported while you build, not when a user runs your program.
§ 02 — Install
One dependency to start.
argot-core is the whole delegate API — nothing else to add, nothing to configure. The annotation style needs two more artifacts and the KSP plugin.
dependencies {
implementation("org.draftcode:argot-core:0.1.2")
}
// Only for the annotation style:
plugins {
id("com.google.devtools.ksp") version "2.3.11"
}
dependencies {
implementation("org.draftcode:argot-annotations:0.1.2")
ksp("org.draftcode:argot-processor:0.1.2")
}