Recipes and Run Scripts

Routine project maintenance should read like a policy, not a growing chain of copied shell commands.

Nova 0.14.0 introduced granular recipes, run-recipes, and run-scripts to make that structure explicit.

Small Recipes Instead of One Large Rewrite

The first package-manifest tooling tried to synchronize too many concerns at once. A project could want Nova to align ownership fields without also changing modules, dependencies, or build artifacts.

Version 0.14.0 split that work into nine package JSON recipes:

• cleanup
• normalize-artifacts
• normalize-bundler
• normalize-dependencies
• normalize-modules
• normalize-tooling
• sync-environment
• sync-identity
• sync-ownership

Each workspace opts into the recipes it wants through nova.config.json. Consumers keep control over policy while Nova owns the repeatable transformation.

One Command for Enabled Maintenance

Running each recipe by hand would only replace one kind of command sprawl with another. The run-recipes utility reads the configuration and executes the enabled set in a stable order.

nova utility run-recipes --replace-file

That makes a repository-level recipes script short and durable:

{
  "scripts": {
    "recipes": "nova utility run-recipes --replace-file"
  }
}

The command can be rerun as a project evolves. Recipes are maintenance operations, not one-time project generators.

Scripts Become Groups

The run-scripts utility gives package.json script names a simple hierarchy. A parent script can run every matching child instead of spelling out a long command chain.

{
  "scripts": {
    "check": "nova utility run-scripts --sequential 'check:*'",
    "check:lint": "eslint . --max-warnings=0",
    "check:types": "nova utility type-check --project tsconfig.json",
    "check:test": "vitest run"
  }
}

Running npm run check now means “run the complete check group.” Adding check:docs later does not require editing the parent command.

Sequential mode keeps dependent checks ordered. Parallel mode serves independent groups, such as development watchers that should stay alive together.

A Cleaner Ownership Boundary

The combination establishes a useful division:

• package.json names the lifecycle developers expect: dev, check, build, deploy, and clean.
• Nested scripts hold the individual tools that implement that lifecycle.
• run-scripts orchestrates those scripts without an external runner.
• nova.config.json declares which maintenance recipes a workspace accepts.
• run-recipes applies those accepted transformations repeatedly.

The repository remains understandable to ordinary npm users, while Nova removes the duplicated glue that tends to drift.

See the current Run Scripts and Run Recipes documentation for the maintained command options.