make-npx-card

Mint your own npx <you> terminal business card in under a minute.

npx make-npx-card

In a hurry? Zero prompts, straight from your GitHub profile:

npx make-npx-card --from-github <you> --yes

The pitch

Paper business cards end up in pockets, and pockets end up in washing machines. Terminal commands end up in muscle memory. This tool scaffolds a complete, immediately publishable npm package that prints your name, links, and an interactive menu whenever anyone, anywhere, runs npx your-name.

You answer a few questions. It handles the rendering, the package.json ceremony, the publish pipeline, and an amount of terminal eye candy that is difficult to justify but easy to enjoy.

The wizard

• GitHub import — type your username and it prefills your name, bio, blog, twitter, and email from your public profile. Respects your time, not your air of mystery.
• Ten themes — Cyberpunk, Synthwave '84, Matrix, Dracula, Catppuccin Mocha, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, Nord, Rosé Pine, Hacker Green, plus custom hex for the uncompromising. Browse with npx make-npx-card themes, or cycle them live on the preview before shipping.
• Live npm registry check — so you don't fall in love with a package name someone claimed in 2016 and abandoned the same afternoon.
• A real preview — the actual card, rendered by the actual renderer, with an edit loop. Nothing touches disk until you approve.
• Quick mode — --yes scaffolds instantly with sane defaults; --from-github alice,bob,carol --yes mints one card per teammate.
• --dry-run — prints exactly what would be written, writes nothing.
• doctor [dir] — health-checks any card: config, bin wiring, deps, template version, and whether your local copy drifted from npm.
• update [dir] — upgrades an existing card to the latest template without touching your config, then tells you what your card just learned.
• git init with a first commit, offered politely; automatic in quick mode.

The cards

Every generated card is a real npm package: one config file (card.config.mjs) holds your data, one runtime (cli.mjs) you never edit. The runtime knows the following tricks:

flag	behavior
(none)	gradient ASCII name, boot animation, themed box with clickable links (OSC 8), interactive menu
--serve [port]	your card is now also a website: an HTTP server with a styled HTML page plus /json, /vcard, /card.svg, /qr
--stats	live GitHub stats — stars, a language bar in GitHub's own colors, npx-runs last week, a 14-day activity sparkline
--qr	scannable QR code to your site, rendered in the terminal
--qr contact	a QR encoding your entire vCard; one scan and you're in their phone contacts
--vcard	npx you --vcard > you.vcf — an importable contact file
--json	machine-readable output for the pipe-and-jq demographic
--plain	no color, no box, no drama; screen-reader and pipeline friendly
--open <link>	jump straight to github, web, resume, email, or the guestbook
--theme <name>	viewers can re-skin your card in their favorite theme; you may question their taste but not their rights
--fetch	a neofetch-style profile view, since you were going to screenshot it anyway
--party	the card hue-rotates through the full color wheel, then composes itself
--matrix	follow the white rabbit
--moo	there is a cow

Also on the menu: copy-my-email via OSC 52 (works over SSH, where clipboards fear to tread), a guestbook that opens a prefilled GitHub issue, and live stats. Cards greet visitors by time of day and pass no judgment on the 3 a.m. crowd. In a non-TTY they print the card and exit instead of hanging on an invisible prompt — an act of basic decency more CLIs should attempt.

The extras (opt-in per scaffold)

• GitHub Actions publish workflow — tag-triggered, with npm provenance
• VHS demo tape — vhs demo.tape records a demo gif of your card
• Animated SVG social card — a terminal window that types $ npx you with a blinking cursor, live inside GitHub READMEs
• Profile README snippet — paste-ready embed for github.com/you/you

What you get

your-name/
├── cli.mjs                        # the card runtime — you never touch this
├── card.config.mjs                # ALL your data — edit anytime
├── package.json                   # bin + shebang + files: publish-ready
├── card.svg                       # animated README/profile embed
├── demo.tape                      # vhs demo.tape → demo.gif
├── profile-snippet.md             # paste into your GitHub profile README
├── .github/workflows/publish.yml  # npm version patch && git push --follow-tags
├── README.md · LICENSE · .gitignore

Then:

cd your-name
npm install
node cli.mjs     # preview
npm login        # once
npm publish      # congratulations, you are now infrastructure

From that point on, anyone with Node and a pulse can run npx your-name.

Updating your card later

Edit card.config.mjs (colors, links, bigName, animate, menu), then npm run pub. Card published from an older template? npx make-npx-card update inside its folder pulls in every new flag while leaving your config alone. When in doubt, npx make-npx-card doctor.

Requirements

Node 18 or newer. A terminal. Mild vanity.

Cards made with this

Open a PR and add yours.

• npx shwetank

License

MIT. The cards it generates are also MIT, in your name — we're not monsters.