automaton was created to greatly simplify and solve some of the problems with Gruntjs and Initializr. Our initial drive for this project was to simplify and aut

automaton was created to greatly simplify and solve some of the problems with Gruntjs and Initializr. Our initial drive for this project was to simplify and automate some common tasks we had on another project. Although Grunt and Initializr could be used to solve this, they were just too verbose, taking away some of the flexibility we needed, and complicating some tasks that we felt should be really simple. So, enough about the why, on to what it is exactly, and how it differs. automaton is a CLI tool and a Node.js module that, in its core, is just an engine capable of running an ordered list of tasks that need to run for the task as a whole to be complete. What makes this powerful is that every task that the user creates, also known as autofiles, encapsulates a specific feature that can itself be used by other autofiles, simply by referencing its id and some options that the task can take. Imagine boxes within boxes, each one with a specific responsibility. For more details, just look at the website above, which presents a more detailed description of what automaton is. As a final note, and we think this is a great deal, it accomplishes a lot, even though it is composed of only a few hundred lines of code, unlike the other tools.