act allows you to install, run, and manage scripts with ease.

I really love the simplicity of uv's inline dependency definitions right on top of Python files. act takes this idea and extends the script header with a command property and then allows global calls to these scripts by their command name via, for example, act run helloworld. Additionally shims are created for each script in the ~/.act/bin directory, allowing you to run scripts directly without the act run prefix.

act <command> [options] [arguments]

Installs a script from the community-scripts directory:

$ act install weather
'weather' is a community script by janoelze.
It may access the internet, read and write files, and use third party libraries.
Are you sure you want to install this script? [y/N]: y
Community script 'weather' installed successfully.
Successfully recreated shims for 2 scripts in '/Users/janoelze/.act/bin'.

Runs the script with the city argument:

# Runs the weather script with the city argument
$ act run weather --city Berlin
Berlin: 🌨  +2°C
Done in 0.50s.

Or—if you've added the ~/.act/bin directory to your PATH—you can run the script directly:

# Runs the weather script with the city argument
$ weather --city Berlin
Berlin: 🌨  +2°
Done in 0.50s.

You can install or update act by running the following command in your terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/janoelze/act/main/install.sh | sh

Uninstall act by running the following command:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/janoelze/act/main/uninstall.sh | sh

The script header contains metadata that describes the script's behavior and dependencies.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# /// script
# command = "helloworld"
# description = "Hello, world!"
# aliases = ["hw"]
# author = "janoelze"
# dependencies = []
# ///

import os

def main():
    print("Hello, world!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Aliases are alternative names for the script that can be used to run it. For example, the helloworld script can also be run with the hw command:

$ act run helloworld
Hello, world!
$ act run hw
Hello, world!
$ hw
Hello, world!

• create [script_name]
  Create a new script with a template header for metadata.
  Example: act create weather

• edit <script_name>
  Open an existing script in your default editor.
  Example: act edit weather

• run <script_name> [args]
  Execute a script, automatically handling its dependencies.
  Example: act run weather --city Boston

• delete <script_name>
  Remove an existing script.
  Example: act delete weather

• list
  List all available scripts by their command names.
  Example: act list

• meta <script_name>
  Display metadata of a specific script.
  Example: act meta weather

• install <script_name>
  Install a community script from the GitHub repository.
  Example: act install weather

• link
  Create shims for all installed scripts, making them globally accessible.
  Example: act link