Short task syntax

For tasks that are just "run one command," the full object form is noisy. rite accepts a one-line shorthand.

The long form

tasks:
  hello:
    cmds:
      - echo "Hello, World!"

The short form

tasks:
  hello: echo "Hello, World!"

Equivalent. Parsed into the same task with a single cmd.

When the short form makes sense

• Thin wrappers around a CLI: lint: golangci-lint run, fmt: go fmt ./....
• Aliases for complex commands kept elsewhere: deploy: ./scripts/deploy.sh prod.
• Rite­files where most tasks are one-liners and the visual weight of the full form dominates the signal.

When to go back to the long form

The moment you need anything beyond a single cmd — deps:, vars:, sources:, silent:, desc:, a second cmds: entry — switch to the full form. There's no mixed mode.

tasks:
  # Keep one-liners short
  fmt: go fmt ./...
  lint: golangci-lint run

  # Long form for anything real
  build:
    deps: [fmt, lint]
    sources: ['**/*.go']
    cmds:
      - go build ./...

What gets auto-filled

A short-form task still gets the defaults you'd get if you wrote the long form:

• silent: false
• No deps:, no vars:
• run: mode defaults to the Ritefile's top-level run:, which is always unless you changed it.

You can combine short-form tasks with run: at the top of the Ritefile to get run-once semantics globally without touching each task.