| name | create-autopkg-recipes |
| description | Create AutoPkg recipes (download, pkg, munki, install, etc.) for a macOS app
from a vendor URL. Use whenever the user asks to create, generate, scaffold,
or add AutoPkg recipes for an app.
Keywords:
- AutoPkg, autopkg
- .download.recipe, .pkg.recipe, .munki.recipe, .install.recipe
- Recipe Robot, recipe-robot
- homebysix-recipes, Munki, pkg
|
| user-invocable | true |
Create AutoPkg Recipes
Scaffold recipes for a macOS app following the current repo's conventions. E2E test the download and pkg before handing off.
1. Check for existing recipes
Run autopkg search <AppName>.download (chains start at .download; filters noise). Try vendor-prefixed variants too (e.g. Google<AppName>.download). If anything matches — in any repo — surface it and ask before building. Don't duplicate.
2. Gather metadata — no full download
From the vendor page, note: download URL (or appcast / GH releases), developer, description, display name.
Short-circuit for conventional apps. If early signals show a straightforward macOS app — a GitHub repo with DMG/ZIP/PKG release assets, a direct download URL, or a Sparkle appcast — stop investigating and pass that input straight to Recipe Robot (step 3). RR is built to handle these cases; there's no value in downloading and inspecting the artifact yourself first. Save the bandwidth and time. Only dig deeper (HEAD checks, page scraping, JS inspection) when the source is ambiguous, gated, or RR fails.
Validate URLs with HEAD only (curl -sIL <url>), never a full download. Apps can be huge; Recipe Robot will do its own fetch. Only download to /tmp/ and inspect by hand (plutil -p, codesign -dvvv, codesign -d -r-) if Recipe Robot fails. Never inspect inside the repo.
Never guess or fabricate domains. When WebFetch returns a relative URL (e.g. /App-1.0.dmg), resolve it against the domain you actually fetched — do not invent a plausible-sounding alternative domain. The summarizer model behind WebFetch can hallucinate domains. Always HEAD-validate the full URL before using it.
Non-fit signals — surface early and ask before building:
- Mac App Store-only (vendor page's only download link is
apps.apple.com/app/..., or page says "available on the Mac App Store"). AutoPkg's normal pipeline can't fetch MAS apps — they require an authenticated Apple ID via mas CLI or nmcspadden-recipes' AppStoreApp processor, and redistribution through munki/pkg is licensing-constrained. Default: skip.
- Paid-only with no trial build (download gated behind purchase/login, no public DMG).
CodeSignatureVerifier can't be wired up without an artifact to inspect. Default: skip unless the user has a licensed download URL to provide.
- TestFlight / beta-only. Not redistributable.
- Source-only / build-from-source (vendor instructs
git clone + make; no pre-built DMG/ZIP/PKG, no GitHub releases). No vendor binary to fetch or signature to verify. Default: skip.
Surface the signal and ask; don't silently proceed.
3. Prefer Recipe Robot
/Applications/Recipe Robot.app/Contents/Resources/scripts/recipe-robot <input>
Accepts: direct download URL; Sparkle appcast (.xml/.rss/.php or appcast in URL); GitHub / BitBucket / SourceForge project URL; Dropbox shared link; local .app (reads SUFeedURL from Info.plist), .pkg, .dmg, or archive (.zip etc.). For local files without a known source, RR falls back to the kMDItemWhereFroms xattr to find the download URL. Rejects marketing pages and existing .recipe files — for a marketing page, find the actual download/appcast/repo URL behind it.
- Config error → ask user to run
--configure and wait.
- "Recipes exist" and detection is wrong → re-run with
--ignore-existing. Don't use reflexively.
- Version-pinned URL (e.g.
/v1.2.3/App.dmg): run RR to scaffold, then prepend a URLTextSearcher targeting a stable page to capture the current URL, wire its output into URLDownloader. Otherwise the recipe pins forever.
- Modernizing old recipes: copy the URL from the existing
.download, run RR with --ignore-existing, then diff+merge into the existing recipes. Don't wholesale replace — preserves customizations while picking up new conventions (e.g. AppPkgCreator).
If RR isn't installed, hand-author by modeling after a repo recipe matching your delivery format (DMG/ZIP/PKG/appcast/GH releases/direct URL).
3a. Gated/API-driven downloads
Signs: HEAD returns HTML or 4xx; download button triggers an XHR; JS required. RR can't handle these — hand-author with chained URLTextSearcher steps extracting the real URL (and intermediate tokens), feeding URLDownloader via result_output_var_name: url. References:
Ecosia/EcosiaBrowser.download.recipe — single URLTextSearcher against a JSON-like API.Google/Antigravity.download.recipe — two chained: HTML page → JS bundle name → DMG URL inside JS source.
Scrape JS sources as strings; don't try to execute.
3b. Custom processors for structured APIs
When an API returns structured data (tracks/locales/OS-keyed bundle IDs/channels) and multiple recipes would otherwise duplicate regex logic, write a custom processor instead:
- Name:
<Vendor><Purpose>InfoProvider.py or <Vendor>URLProvider.py.
- Subclass
autopkglib.URLGetter.
- Clean
input_variables (defaults) + output_variables (url, version, bundle_id).
- Keep per-release mapping in a module-level dict.
Reference: Cocktail/CocktailReleasesInfoProvider.py. For a single URL behind an API, URLTextSearcher is fine — don't over-engineer.
4. Repo conventions
- Directory named after the app (or the developer, if one already exists for them).
- Identifier namespace
com.github.homebysix.<type>.<App>.
- Consistent
MinimumVersion, Input/NAME, ParentRecipe, processor order with neighbors.
- Download recipe always includes
CodeSignatureVerifier with the app's designated requirement. Quote any subject.OU value that starts with a digit (e.g. = "7D2YX5DQ6M", not = 7D2YX5DQ6M) — the codesign requirement parser fails at runtime on unquoted digit-leading OUs even though the recipe lints fine. Recipe Robot sometimes emits the unquoted form; fix it if your Team ID starts with a digit.
- ZIP with no appcast:
URLDownloader → EndOfCheckPhase → Unarchiver → CodeSignatureVerifier → Versioner.
plutil -lint every file.
4a. Multi-architecture apps
RR doesn't add an ARCH variable — its default regex matches multiple variants non-deterministically. Parameterize manually:
GitHubReleasesInfoProvider → %ARCH% in asset_regex (e.g. .*-%ARCH%\.dmg$).URLTextSearcher → %ARCH% in re_pattern or url.- Static
URLDownloader → %ARCH% in url.
Set Input/ARCH default (usually arm64) and document alternatives in Description (see Google/Antigravity.download.recipe).
Don't pipe %ARCH% into munki's supported_architectures:
- Vendor names (
x64, amd64, intel) rarely match munki's (x86_64, arm64) — translating needs FindAndReplace and silently breaks targeting if wrong.
x86_64-only blocks Rosetta 2 installs on Apple Silicon, which is usually desirable to allow. Unset (munki's default) is normally correct.
Set it only when the binary genuinely won't run under Rosetta (arm64-only, Intel-only kext).
4b. Antipatterns (recognize, don't recommend)
Functional but not conventions here. Don't add proactively; do them only if asked.
StopProcessingIf after EndOfCheckPhase to skip pkg/munki steps when the download is unchanged. Modest savings; AutoPkg already skips the download itself.- Pseudo-universal installers merging Intel + arm64 into one arch-conditional pkg. Prefer a true universal vendor build or two parameterized recipes — munki is arch-aware natively and Jamf can gate by smart groups. Only consider the merged form if the deployment platform can't target by arch, and flag it as a workaround.
- Third-party aggregator URLs (Homebrew formulas/taps, MacUpdate, download aggregators) as the download or version source. Each intermediary is a supply-chain trust hop — a party who can be compromised, rewrite the binary, stop maintaining the formula, or redistribute under different terms. Every added step expands the set of parties the downstream sysadmin has to trust. Go direct to the vendor's source URL. Partial exception: scraping a Homebrew tap only to discover the current version string, then downloading from the vendor's own host when the vendor doesn't publish a version manifest — see
Cosine/cos.download.recipe. Still sub-ideal; a vendor-hosted version endpoint would be strictly better. Apply the same "minimize trust hops" lens to any recipe that chains through intermediaries for the binary itself.
5. Security gates — require explicit approval
Stop and ask before proceeding if:
- No code signature requirement (unsigned source or
CodeSignatureVerifier omitted) — breaks AutoPkg's integrity check.
- Insecure HTTP anywhere (download, appcast) — MITM-vulnerable.
Explain the risk; proceed only on a clear yes.
6. E2E test — download and pkg only
autopkg run -vvq <App>/<App>.download.recipe <App>/<App>.pkg.recipe
Verify fetch → unarchive → signature → version, and that pkg lands at the expected path. Don't run install/munki/etc — they write to /Applications, the munki repo, etc. Trust-info warnings on uncommitted recipes are expected.
7. Report
Summarize what was created, what ran clean, and any caveats (missing Team ID, unusual signing, dev-name mismatch, skipped tests). Don't commit or push unless asked.
