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Felipe Inoue
Felipe Inoue

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Introducing Crower: A Simpler Way to Run Everyday Commands

#opensource #ai #automation #tooling

👋 Hello, everyone! Happy Sunday!

I’m excited to share my other project: Crower — a local desktop app that makes it easier to run commands from anywhere.

🔗 Check it out: github.com/fiwon123/crower

💡 The idea behind Crower

Crower is inspired by tools like package managers, Makefile, and package.json. But unlike those tools, Crower isn’t focused on a single project. It’s designed for everyday use: saving commands and automating tasks you repeat often.

For example, maybe you regularly need to:

  • Run the same command
  • Open several projects
  • Set up a project using the same steps

With Crower, you can configure a task once and run it whenever you need. Lets say you create a new command alias using setup name to configure a folder project:

crower setup
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Or use the shorter command:

cr setup
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Crower can run a more complex command—or a series of steps—through one simple command.

🧰 Why I started building it

On Windows, you can create aliases to access apps from different folders. You can also set environment variables, like those in a .env file, to quickly access values.

Crower isn’t meant to replace aliases, environment variables, Makefile, or package.json. Instead, I’d like it to bring some of those ideas together and make common tasks easier to manage.

🌍 Built with flexibility in mind

I’d like Crower to work across operating systems and shells. Shells can handle configuration differently—I’ve noticed this, for example, when using Zsh and Bash on Linux.

For now, Crower stores its configuration in TOML. In the future, I’d like to make it possible to use other file formats, convert commands more easily, and combine groups of commands so they can be shared across devices or with other people.

🤖 A quick note about AI

I’m going to take a break from this project for now. I’ve been using AI a lot, and although I know where I want to take Crower, I think some parts need a hands-on review. AI has been a great help, but it can still introduce bugs.

That said, I’m really enjoying using AI as a tool to help me build! 😄

Thanks for reading! 🙌

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