November 25, 2025 • 5 min read

Pipeline Tools Weekly: Shipping 0.1.7 and Smoother Shows

If you’re a solo creator or part of a small animation/game-dev team, you still need a clear, reliable production pipeline—just without the weight of big-studio infrastructure.

Pipeline Tools is a lightweight, artist-friendly CLI pipeline tool that standardizes your project folders, tracks shows, assets, shots, tasks, and versions in a local SQLite database, and runs fully offline on your own disk.

This week’s release, v0.1.7, focuses on making shows smoother to run, deploy, and automate.

What Is Pipeline Tools?

Pipeline Tools is a production pipeline CLI designed for:

  • Solo animators and game developers
  • Tiny studios without a full-time TD or DevOps team
  • Anyone who wants predictable project structure and basic tracking without a web UI

Instead of spinning up a server, you get:

  • Predictable directory layouts per show
  • A local SQLite DB for shows, assets, shots, tasks, versions
  • Fast CLI commands that play nicely with Git, CI, and shell scripts
  • Fully offline workflows—no accounts, no cloud required

Key Features in Everyday Production

One-Command Show Setup

Kick off a new project with a single command:

pipeline-tools shows create \
  -c DMO \
  -n "Demo Short 30s" \
  -t animation_short

This will:

  • Scaffold a full folder tree from a template (e.g. animation_short)
  • Register the show in the local SQLite database
  • Give you a consistent, predictable structure like:
DMO_DemoShort30s/
  01_ADMIN/
  02_ASSETS/
  03_SHOTS/
  04_RND/
  …

No more ad-hoc folders like NewProject_FINAL_v4_really_final.

Asset & Shot Tracking (On Disk + in DB)

Once the show exists, you can add assets and shots that automatically get:

  • Per-asset/shot workfiles folders
  • Per-asset/shot renders/output folders
  • Statuses (for example WIP, BLOCKED, FINAL)
  • Tags and version IDs stored in the SQLite DB

Example asset creation:

pipeline-tools assets add \
  -t CH \
  -n HeroCharacter

That gives you a clean, repeatable structure you can use across Blender, Unreal, Krita, and other DCCs.

Tasks and Versions

Pipeline Tools also supports lightweight task lists and version tracking:

  • Track small todo items per asset or shot
  • Tag versions (wip, client_v01, final)
  • Keep a simple history without relying only on filenames

It’s intentionally minimal: no web dashboards, just clear CLI output you can script around.

Health Checks with doctor

When productions grow, paths and metadata can drift. Use:

pipeline-tools doctor --json

This runs a health check that:

  • Verifies folders exist where the DB thinks they are
  • Surfaces missing or extra paths
  • Outputs JSON so you can plug it into CI, reports, or custom scripts

For teams, this makes it easier to catch structural issues before they affect deliveries.

What’s New in Pipeline Tools v0.1.7

Release 0.1.7 focuses on reliability, automation friendliness, and cleanup.

Top-Level --version Flag

You can now quickly verify the installed version:

pipeline-tools --version

Useful for:

  • Debugging PATH issues
  • CI pipelines that need to ensure a specific version
  • Reproducible production environments

Cleaner, Public-Friendly Defaults

Internally specific project names and legacy references have been:

  • Scrubbed from examples
  • Replaced with clearer, generic naming
  • Aligned with the public GitHub release

This makes it easier for new users to copy-paste commands without inheriting someone else’s internal codes.

Stronger CLI Argument Handling

Tests were improved to catch argv passthrough regressions, so:

  • CLI arguments are passed correctly through the toolchain
  • Automation scripts are less likely to break silently
  • Upgrades between versions stay more stable

Published 0.1.7 Release Artifacts

Versioned wheel artifacts for 0.1.7 are available on GitHub, making installs:

  • Reproducible
  • CI-friendly
  • Easy to pin to a specific version

How I’m Using Pipeline Tools Right Now

Here’s how Pipeline Tools fits into my own animation pipeline and game-dev pipeline.

1. Create a New Show

pipeline-tools shows create \
  -c DMO \
  -n "Demo Short 30s" \
  -t animation_short

This instantly gives me:

  • A human-readable show root on disk
  • A show record in SQLite with code, name, and template
  • A consistent layout I can sync via Git or back up to external drives

2. Add Hero Assets and Tasks

For key characters and props:

pipeline-tools assets add \
  -t CH \
  -n HeroCharacter

Then I can:

  • Assign simple tasks to that asset
  • Track status as it moves from design → modeling → rigging → animation
  • Keep versions tidy and discoverable

This keeps my file system and my mental model of the show in sync.

Try Pipeline Tools 0.1.7

You can install the current release directly from GitHub using pipx:

pipx install \
  https://github.com/Sreyeesh/pipeline-tools/releases/download/v0.1.7/pipeline_tools-0.1.7-py3-none-any.whl

Using pipx is recommended so pipeline-tools stays isolated and easy to upgrade.

Quick Sanity Checks

After installation:

pipeline-tools --version
pipeline-tools --examples
  • --version confirms the installed CLI version
  • --examples shows common commands and usage patterns

Spin Up Your First Project

To create a new animation short project:

pipeline-tools shows create \
  -c DMO \
  -n "Demo Short 30s" \
  -t animation_short

From there you can:

  • Add assets:

bash pipeline-tools assets add -t CH -n HeroCharacter * Add shots * Start tracking tasks and versions

What’s Coming Next

In the next Pipeline Tools Weekly updates, I am planning to:

  • Review status and task flows Make sure they feel good for both design and animation work, not just technical users.

  • Add more templates

  • Episodic TV or series layouts

  • VFX-oriented structures So you can pick the production style that matches your show.

  • Explore richer search and tag queries For example:

  • Find all WIP character assets

  • List shots tagged EP01 that are BLOCKED
  • Filter versions by tag or status straight from the CLI