---
id: pyscaffold
version: "4.6"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# PyScaffold — Template tool for putting up the scaffold of a Python project

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 3.9M/mo

## What it is and what it does

PyScaffold is a command-line tool that generates a complete, production-ready Python project structure with one command. It creates a Git repository with sensible defaults for packaging, testing, documentation, and deployment—including setup.cfg configuration, pytest integration, Sphinx documentation templates, tox automation, and optional CI/CD support via flags like --cirrus. The generated project uses setuptools-scm for automatic versioning from Git tags and includes a .gitignore tuned for Python development.

The tool is designed to enforce best practices across teams and reduce boilerplate setup time. It supports extensions for specialized project types (data science, Django, Markdown docs) and integrates with common Python tools like pytest, tox, and pre-commit. Once generated, a project can be immediately installed in editable mode and is ready for development, testing, and publication to PyPI.

Use it for:

- Quickly bootstrap a new open-source Python library with standard packaging and documentation structure.
- Set up a team project with consistent configuration, testing, and CI/CD templates across multiple developers.
- Generate a data science project template with pre-configured tools via the --dsproject extension.
- Create a Django project with PyScaffold's automation and best practices baked in.
- Establish a project with pre-commit hooks and automated version management via Git tags.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

PyScaffold generates a complete Python project template with packaging, testing, documentation, and CI/CD scaffolding, ready to publish to PyPI.

Yes. PyScaffold is worth installing if you regularly create Python packages or lead teams that do. It eliminates repetitive setup work, enforces ecosystem best practices, and has proven stable over a decade of use by thousands of developers. No known vulnerabilities, permissive MIT license, and active maintenance make it a low-risk productivity gain.

## Install

pip install pyscaffold
uv add pyscaffold
poetry add pyscaffold

## Installing PyScaffold

Before you install: Low install friction with eight standard runtime dependencies. Active maintenance with last commit on 2026-08-10 and stable production status since initial release in 2014.

License in practice: MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute PyScaffold-generated projects with minimal restrictions, and the tool itself imposes no licensing constraints on your code.

Quickstart:

pip install pyscaffold
putup my_project
cd my_project
pip install -e .

Requires Git to be installed and configured with at least name and email set.

Verify before relying:

- Whether generated projects work with Python versions older than 3.7 or newer than current stable.
- Performance characteristics when generating very large or complex project structures.
- Compatibility of generated tox configurations with recent tox versions.

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 3.9M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

python project template generator, bootstrap python package, project scaffolding tool, python packaging setup, automated project structure, python project boilerplate, setuptools project generator, project-generator, packaging, scaffolding

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/pyscaffold) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/pyscaffold/)