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arglite

A lightweight, explicit argument parsing library for Python programs.

arglite is for when you want a simple CLI parser without the boilerplate of argparse. Declare your flags, access them as attributes, and get on with your program.

Quick example

demo.py
import arglite

arglite.parser.require("name", type=str)
arglite.parser.optional("count", default=1, type=int)
arglite.parser.flag("verbose")

def main():
    print(arglite.parser.name)
    print(arglite.parser.count)
    print(arglite.parser.verbose)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

python demo.py --name Yo --count 5 --verbose

Output:

Yo
5
True

Why arglite?

  • Explicit declarations — no reflection, no source-code scanning, no magic.
  • Short syntax — -n is automatically derived from --name.
  • Type conversion — get int, float, bool, or raw strings.
  • YAML config — move flag metadata into .arglite.yaml.
  • Help built-in — -h / --help prints a Rich table of all flags.

Where to go next