Groups and Aliases

Groups and aliases improve discoverability without changing runtime behavior. They are especially useful once qp.yaml has dozens of tasks.

Groups

A group is a named task family with optional description.

groups:
  quality:
    desc: Fast local quality checks
    tasks: [lint, test, check]
  release:
    desc: Packaging and publishing tasks
    tasks: [build, package, publish]

Groups are used by:

• qp list (human-readable grouped output)
• qp help <group> (group summary + member tasks)
• generated docs and agent-facing views

Example

$ qp help quality
Group: quality
Description: Fast local quality checks
Tasks:
  - lint
  - test
  - check

Aliases

Aliases map a short or migration-friendly name to an existing task.

tasks:
  build:
    desc: Build all binaries
    cmd: go build ./cmd/...

aliases:
  b: build
  compile: build

qp b
qp compile
qp help b

All aliases execute the same underlying task definition.

Aliases And Default Task

default: can point at either a task name or an alias:

default: b

With this config, plain qp runs build.

Practical Naming Pattern

Use this pattern in larger repos:

1. Keep canonical task names explicit (build-backend, build-web).
2. Add short aliases only for very common commands (b, t, g).
3. Use groups for mental domains (quality, release, ops, db).

groups:
  quality:
    tasks: [lint, test, check]
  ops:
    tasks: [db-migrate, deploy-staging, deploy-prod]

aliases:
  t: test
  g: guard

JSON View

qp list --json includes group and alias metadata, which helps editor integrations and internal tooling keep command palettes accurate.

Next Step

For command interfaces and task behavior details, continue to Tasks.