preflt — Checklists for things that matter

Philosophy

Not a
to-do app.

The idea borrows from aviation: crews run checklists not because they forget things, but because memory isn't reliable under pressure. That principle applies just as well to a deploy, an incident, or a weekly ops review.

preflt brings that to the command line — nothing more than that. Items are confirmed one at a time, progress survives crashes, and every run leaves a log. No half-remembered steps. No "I think I did that."

Features

Everything a runbook needs.

⬡

Phases

Group items under named headings. Each phase appears as a divider in both the TUI and web UI.

↩

Resume

Progress is saved after every confirmed item. Kill the process, restart — pick up exactly where you left off.

◈

Conditions

Items can branch on yes/no answers — trigger a different checklist, skip ahead, or abort and hand off immediately.

⇢

Chaining

A checklist can trigger the next one automatically on completion. Chains share a log ID with loop protection built in.

⚡

Automations

Run shell commands or POST to a webhook on any item confirmation or on checklist completion. Errors are logged, never blocking.

◷

Scheduling

▤

History

Every run is logged with timestamps, duration, and per-item values. preflt history <name> shows the last 10.

⚠

Emergency mode

Set type: emergency to disable N/A and skipping. Every item must be explicitly confirmed — no exceptions.

Schema

Write YAML.
Run anything.

Checklists live in ~/.preflt/ as plain YAML files. The schema is small and readable — phases, items, types, and optional conditions.

Items are do (confirm) or check (capture a value)
Add a note for context shown during that item
Mark items na_allowed: true for optional steps
Conditions branch on yes/no without extra code
Fire shell or webhook automations per-item or on completion
Set trigger_checklist to chain into the next workflow

~/.preflt/deploy.yaml yaml

name: deploy
description: Pre-deployment checklist

phases:
  - name: CODE
    items:
      - id: tests
        label: All tests passing?
        type: do

      - id: version
        label: What version are we deploying?
        type: check

  - name: DEPLOY
    items:
      - id: env-vars
        label: Environment variables set in prod?
        type: do

      - id: rollback
        label: Rollback plan documented?
        note: Know the exact steps to revert
        type: do
        on_complete:
          - shell: echo "ready to ship"
          - webhook: https://hooks.example.com/deploy

trigger_checklist: post-deploy
# starts post-deploy automatically on completion

Interfaces

Terminal or browser — same state.

⬛ $ preflt run deploy

Terminal TUI

A keyboard-driven interface built with Bubbletea. Steps through each item one at a time — no list to scroll, no decisions to make. Just the current item and what to do.

Full keyboard control — confirm, N/A, quit to save
Text entry prompt for check-type items
Yes/no screen for condition items
Progress survives process kills — always resumable

🌐 $ preflt web deploy

Browser UI

Starts a local server at localhost:8080 and opens the checklist in your browser. Ideal for screen sharing, a second monitor, or remote sessions over SSH port-forward.

Full checklist visible at a glance with progress overview
Confirm, N/A, and text input — all from the browser
Works headlessly — no display required on the host
Checklist chains continue without restarting the server

⇄

Both interfaces write to the same run state. Start in the terminal, switch to the browser, continue from the same item. The state file on disk is the single source of truth.

Install

Up in 30 seconds.

Detects your OS and architecture automatically. No Go installation required.

macOS / Linux — recommended

$ curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/benlutz/preflt/main/install.sh | sh

Go install (requires Go 1.21+)

$ go install github.com/benlutz/preflt/cmd/preflt@latest

After install, create your first checklist at ~/.preflt/deploy.yaml
then run preflt run deploy — or just preflt to see what's due today.

Not ato-do app.