Stop copying config files into every new project — I built a CLI for this

Ihda — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 21:52:44 +0000

You know that feeling when you start a new project and spend
the first 20 minutes doing nothing productive?

Hunting for the Android keystore. Finding the right .env file.
Copying VS Code settings. Again. And again. Every. Single. Project.

I got tired of it. So I tried building something to fix it — coffee-installer.

How it works

Create a collection folder and point coffee-installer to it:

mkdir ~/.coffee-collection
echo '{ "baseSource": "~/.coffee-collection" }' > ~/.coffee.config.json

Add your reusable files to the collection:

mkdir -p ~/.coffee-collection/my-app/android/app
cp android/app/keystore.jks ~/.coffee-collection/my-app/android/app/
cp android/key.properties   ~/.coffee-collection/my-app/android/

Preview before installing:

$ coffee diff my-app
Diff — my-app (config)
  + add         android/key.properties
  + add         android/app/keystore.jks
  + add         frontend/.env.development.local
3 to add, 0 to overwrite, 0 to skip

Then install with one command:

$ coffee install my-app

📦 Installing my-app...
  ✅ copied android/key.properties
  ✅ copied android/app/keystore.jks
  ✅ copied frontend/.env.development.local
✅ my-app installed.

All commands

coffee list              # see everything in your collection
coffee diff my-app       # preview before installing
coffee install my-app    # install into current project
coffee pull my-app       # sync changes back to collection

Why I built this

I work across multiple projects — mobile apps, web backends, Flutter apps.
Every project needs the same credentials, the same IDE config, the same
environment files.

The alternative was a folder of files I'd manually copy every time, or
worse — storing credentials in a repo (never do this).

coffee-installer keeps everything in one local folder that never touches version control. It's not perfect yet, but it already saves me a lot of setup time.

Zero dependencies

The entire thing runs on Node.js stdlib only — no external packages,
nothing to audit, nothing that breaks when a dependency changes.

Try it

ihdatech / coffee-installer

CLI for copying files from your private coffee collection into any project

coffee-installer

Stop copying the same config files into every new project.

coffee-installer lets you keep keystores, .env files, IDE settings, credentials, and any files you reuse across projects in one place — your coffee collection — and install them into any project with a single command.

coffee install my-app

Why

Every new project starts the same way: hunt for the .env file from the last project, find the Android keystore, copy the VS Code settings, remember where you put the Firebase credentials...

coffee-installer solves this by keeping all those files in a local collection folder and giving you a fast CLI to install, preview, and sync them.

Installation

npm install -g coffee-installer

Both coffee and coffee-installer are registered as CLI commands.

Demo

$ coffee list
Coffee Collection — ~/.coffee-collection

Config-defined projects:
  my-app     ~/.coffee.config.json
  backend    ~/.coffee.config.json

Folders in collection:
  .agents    (symlink)
  .vscode    (symlink)
  my-app     (config + convention)

$ coffee diff my-app

…

View on GitHub

npmjs.com

⭐ Star coffee-installer on GitHub

I'm still figuring out the best workflow myself — how do YOU handle this?
I'd love to learn from how others solve it. Drop it in the comments! 👇

DEV Community: Ihda