Glue

Glue is an IDL (Interface Definition Language) and toolchain for modeling data and interfaces, and a unified toolchain for code generation, IDE support, and more.
Designed to be simple, fast, human-friendly, AI-friendly, and language-agnostic.

Important

The Glue toolchain is in beta, use for production with caution and at your own risk. Expect breaking changes and bugs, though we will try to minimize these. Feedback and contributions are very welcome!

For an interactive playground, documentation and more details see the Glue website.

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AI & LLMs

Glue is designed to be LLM-friendly. /llms.txt includes the entirety of the Glue docs - simply provide it to your favorite agentic coding solution.

Glue's syntax is concise and forgiving, making it easy for LLMs to work with while remaining unambiguous and easy to parse. It also has informative error messages to help guide you (or your agent nowadays) when you make a mistake.

You can install the official Glue skill (defined here) from this repository:

npx skills add guywaldman/glue --skill glue

The published skill points agents to the live docs, /llms.txt, and repository documentation instead of bundling a generated docs mirror.

Quickstart

1. Install

# Homebrew
brew install guywaldman/tap/glue

# Linux/macOS
curl -fsSL https://github.com/guywaldman/glue/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

# Windows (PowerShell)
iwr -useb https://github.com/guywaldman/glue/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex

2. Create a Glue file

Define your data models and interfaces using the Glue IDL:

// models.glue

model Person {
  name: string
  age: int
  residence_end_date?: string // Optional fields are denoted with a `?`
  is_employed: bool = false   // Default values are supported
}

model Building {
  name: string
  apartments: Record<int, Apartment>
  address: Address

  // Nested models are supported
  model Address {
    street: string
    city: string
    country_code: string
    zipcode: string
  }
}

// Endpoints (like OpenAPI) are supported
endpoint "GET /building/{building_id}" GetBuilding {
  responses: {
    200: Building
    4XX: ApiError
  }
}

3. Generate code

Pick a target (typescript, python, rust, go, openapi, jsonschema, protobuf) and generate code:

glue gen typescript -i models.glue -o ./generated

4. (Optional) Configure code generation

Use a .gluerc.yaml file to customize output:

global:
  output_base_dir: "./src/generated"

gen:
  - mode: typescript
    files: "models/*.glue"
    output: "{file_name}.ts"
    config_overrides:
      typescript:
        zod: true

5. (Optional) Install the VS Code extension

Install the Glue VS Code extension for syntax highlighting, diagnostics, hover definitions, go-to definitions, and more.