start-app

name	start-app
description	Creates a new app from a template if present and adds it to settings and URLs
allowed-tools	Read, Grep, Glob, Edit, Write, Bash()
argument-hint	<app_name> [template_path]

Start App and Include to Settings and URLs

Inputs

• app_name: The name of the new Django application to create
• template_path: The path of the template to use (optional)

Template Discovery

If template_path is not provided:

1. Use Glob to scan the current directory for any folder whose name contains the word "template". Try both *template* and *Template*. Note: on case-sensitive filesystems (Linux) these two patterns do not cover all casings (e.g. *TEMPLATE*); they are a best-effort heuristic.
2. If exactly one match is found, suggest it to the user: "Found template module <folder_name>. Use it? (yes/no)"
   • If the user confirms, use that folder as the template.
   • If the user declines, proceed without a template.
3. If multiple matches are found, list them and ask the user to pick one or proceed without a template.
4. If no match is found, proceed without a template.

If template_path is provided, skip discovery and use it directly.

Check that Application does not Already Exist

Stop execution if app_name already exists

Creation of App

If template_path is available, run:

uv run python manage.py startapp "${app_name}" --template="${template_path}"

else run:

uv run python manage.py startapp "${app_name}"

Integrate with Application

Add to INSTALLED_APPS

Discover settings file, read manage.py to extract the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE value, then open that file.

Append app_name to INSTALLED_APPS within the settings file if not already there.

Add to URLs

Execute this only if template_path contains a URL file.

In main urls.py within settings directory.

Generate a url_prefix from the app_name, replace underscores with hyphens and lowercase, so "my_app" becomes "my-app".

Append to urlpatterns:

path("<url_prefix>/", include("<app_name>.urls")),

Add to pyproject.toml tests if there

Add test path to pyproject.toml under testpaths if the [tool.pytest.ini_options] section exists. Note: testpaths must go in [tool.pytest.ini_options], not [tool.pytest] — pytest silently ignores the latter.

   testpaths = [
       # ...
       "<app_name>/tests",
   ]