beancount-init

Scaffold a fresh ledger in the current working directory. Prefer a single bea installation for create + validate. Fava's browser UI is optional and has its own runtime — it is not a prerequisite for bea ledger work.

Run the steps in order. Stop if a preflight check fails — partial scaffolding is worse than no scaffolding.

Prefer bea

Read references/bea-cli.md for the shared command contract. Create and validate the ledger through bea init and bea check. If bea is absent, use the explicit template and developer path in references/compatibility.md. Fava is a separate, optional browser runtime; run Step 4 only when requested.

Step 1 — Preflight

Run pwd && ls -A to see the working directory.

Hard-refuse if any of these already exist: main.bean, pyproject.toml, Makefile. Print which ones are present and stop. Do not overwrite.

If the directory contains other files but none of those markers, warn once and ask for confirmation before continuing.

Check command -v bea and remember BEA (yes/no). Ask for the operating currency (default USD) and an optional checking opening balance; call the answers CURRENCY and OPENING (empty when none). Detect FAVA: yes when the user asked for Fava / make start / "bootstrap fava", otherwise ask once (default no when BEA is yes; default yes only when BEA is no and they still want a browser — otherwise they can install bea later).

When FAVA is yes, verify uv with command -v uv. If missing, stop and tell them to install it (brew install uv on macOS, or curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh).

Step 2 — Resolve the opening date

Use the historical start date supplied by the user or beancount-migrate when present. It must be on/before the earliest entry, including any opening-balance transaction. Otherwise run date +%Y-%m-%d and use today. Call it OPEN_DATE. Do not scaffold with today's opens and then rewrite them for old history.

Step 3 — Write main.bean

When BEA is yes, set directory to the current directory, currency to CURRENCY, and open_date to OPEN_DATE:

bea --json --no-input init "$directory" --currency "$currency" --date "$open_date"

Add --opening-balance "Assets:Checking OPENING" to that command only when OPENING is non-empty. Then bind ledger to the new root's absolute path and run the check recipe in references/bea-cli.md.

bea init . writes ./main.bean. Do not write any template on this path — the file equals bea init byte-for-byte. Skip to Step 4 when FAVA is yes; otherwise Step 5.

When BEA is no, use the fourteen-account template in references/compatibility.md, with the same currency, open date and optional opening balance. Validate through the explicit developer path there; report an unvalidated result if no checker is available.

Step 4 — Optional Fava browser setup

Skip this entire step when FAVA is no.

Port

python3 -c "import random; bad={50000,55555,60000,65000}; ps=[p for p in range(49152,65536) if p not in bad and p%1000]; print(random.choice(ps))"

Call the integer PORT. If python3 is missing: awk 'BEGIN{srand(); print 49152 + int(rand()*16384)}'.

uv project + Fava

uv init --bare
uv add fava

--bare skips hello-world boilerplate. uv add fava pulls Fava's own runtime deps (including Beancount for the browser) into .venv/ — that is Fava's environment, not a second customer CLI. Do not also uv add beancount for bea operations.

Makefile

Tab-indent the recipe line. Substitute {{PORT}}:

.PHONY: start
PORT ?= {{PORT}}

start:
	uv run fava main.bean -p $(PORT)

.gitignore

Overwrite whatever uv init --bare wrote:

# Python
__pycache__/
*.py[cod]
*$py.class
*.so
.Python
build/
dist/
*.egg-info/
.eggs/
.pytest_cache/
.mypy_cache/
.ruff_cache/
.coverage
htmlcov/
.tox/
.venv/
venv/
env/

# macOS
.DS_Store
.AppleDouble
.LSOverride
._*
.Spotlight-V100
.Trashes

# Linux
*~
.fuse_hidden*
.directory
.Trash-*
.nfs*

# JetBrains
.idea/
*.iml
*.iws
*.ipr
out/

# VS Code
.vscode/
*.code-workspace
.history/

# Fava
.fava/

Step 5 — git init (only if needed)

If .git/ does not already exist, run git init. Don't stage anything.

Step 6 — Report

Print:

• Files created (main.bean; plus Makefile, .gitignore, pyproject.toml, uv.lock, .venv/ when FAVA ran).
• When BEA validated: bea check passed.
• When FAVA: the port and make start → http://localhost:<PORT>.
• When BEA only: next steps such as bea check, bea import, or bea --json query.

Keep the report tight — one short line per item.