pretend is a Go library for documenting operational workflows as interactive, human-in-the-loop scripts.
It lets you describe your manual procedures as step-by-step “pretend” scripts, pausing at each step for confirmation, without making any real changes to your systems.

"Good documentation is almost runnable"

Features

• Write interactive “do-nothing” scripts in Go
• Clearly separate groups/phases of steps
• Colorful terminal output for readability
• Pause for operator confirmation after each step
• Perfect for onboarding, runbooks, or documenting processes before automation

Installation

go get github.com/boris/pretend

Also requires fatih/color (automatically installed by go get).

Or, you can get the binary directly from the releases page.

Usage

Describe your steps in JSON, then run pretend -help for options.

{
  "name": "Deploy Web App",
  "steps": [
    { "desc": "Clone repository", "cmd": "git clone https://example.com/repo.git" },
    {
      "desc": "Install dependencies",
      "steps": [
        { "desc": "Python", "cmd": "pip install -r requirements.txt" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

See examples directory for a complete example.

Why?

• Share operational runbooks in a way that’s unambiguous and interactive
• Document “how-to”s for processes you might automate later
• Help new teammates safely learn infrastructure workflows
• Provide a bridge between human and automated operations