Tequio

In México, the task or collective work that each person owes to their community is known as tequio.

A task orchestration CLI that runs shell commands with dependency resolution and displays live output in an interactive terminal UI.

Features

• INI-based configuration — define tasks, dependencies, and readiness checks in a simple config file
• Dependency resolution — tasks are topologically sorted and wait for their dependencies before starting
• Ready checks — a task can declare a substring pattern that signals when it's ready, so dependents don't have to wait for full completion
• Interactive TUI — real-time output from all tasks displayed in a terminal interface powered by a vendored fork of turborepo-ui
• Graceful shutdown — press Ctrl+C to kill all running processes and exit cleanly
• Preflight checks — run lint/test/build checks before pushing or opening a PR
• Install commands — seed shared dependencies in the base repo, ready to be symlinked into worktrees
• asdf support — ~/.asdf/shims is always prepended to PATH for all child processes

Usage

tequio                        # run all tasks
tequio api database           # run specific tasks (and their dependencies)
tequio --stop                 # kill orphan processes from a previous run
tequio --preflight            # run preflight checks for all tasks
tequio --preflight api        # run preflight checks for a specific task
tequio --install              # run install commands for all tasks
tequio --install front        # run install command for a specific task

Override the working directory without editing tequio.ini:

tequio --preflight front --work_dir .worktrees/some-branch
tequio --install front --repo_dir regulix-frontend

If no config file is given, it defaults to tequio.ini in the current directory. Use -c / --config to specify a different path.

Keybindings

Key	Action
Up / Down	Switch between tasks
q	Stop all tasks and exit

Configuration

Tasks are defined in an INI file. Each section is a task:

[database]
command     = make pgup
ready_check = database is ready

[api]
repo_dir    = my-api
work_dir    = .worktrees/feat-123
command     = pnpm run dev
install     = pnpm install
preflight   = pnpm run lint && pnpm run test && pnpm run build
depends_on  = database
ready_check = listening on port

Fields

Field	Required	Description
command	yes	Shell command to run (via bash -c)
repo_dir	no	Base repo directory — source of truth for installs and worktree symlinking
work_dir	no	Active working directory for running the process (can be a worktree path)
depends_on	no	Task(s) that must be ready first (comma-separated)
ready_check	no	Substring in stdout that signals readiness. If omitted, task is ready immediately
preflight	no	Command to run with --preflight (e.g. lint, test, build)
install	no	Command to run with --install (e.g. pnpm install)
* (UPPER_CASE)	no	Any UPPER_CASE key is injected as an environment variable for the spawned process

Environment Variables

Any UPPER_CASE key in a task section is automatically injected as an environment variable when the process spawns. Lowercase keys (command, work_dir, etc.) are treated as config fields and are never passed to the process.

[api]
command     = pnpm run dev
NODE_ENV    = development
DATABASE_URL = postgres://localhost:5432/myapp
LOG_LEVEL   = debug

These work in all modes — tequio, tequio --preflight, and tequio --install.

Note: PATH is always managed by tequio (asdf shims are prepended) regardless of whether you set it as an env var.

repo_dir vs work_dir

Use both when working with git worktrees:

• repo_dir — the base/main repository. Used by --install and worktree-setup to seed shared dependencies.
• work_dir — the active directory tequio runs the process from. Can be a worktree path.

When no worktree is active, work_dir alone is sufficient.

[front]
repo_dir  = regulix-frontend                          # base repo, never changes
work_dir  = .worktrees/feat-456                       # active worktree, swap as needed
install   = pnpm install
command   = pnpm run dev
preflight = pnpm run lint && pnpm run build

[api]
command     = pnpm run dev
NODE_ENV    = development
DATABASE_URL = postgres://localhost:5432/myapp
depends_on  = database
ready_check = listening on port

Building

Requires Rust nightly (nightly-2025-12-05, configured in rust-toolchain.toml).

make build     # cargo build --release
make run       # cargo run -- tequio.ini
make install   # copy binary to ~/.local/bin/tequio

License

MIT