ansible-interactive

Build and run an ansible-playbook command by answering a few questions:

1. Inventory: picks up your ansible.cfg / ANSIBLE_INVENTORY default, INI and YAML inventory files, inventory plugin configs, and inventory/ or inventories/* directories.
2. Hosts: choose groups or single hosts for --limit, or none to run on all hosts.
3. Playbook: any YAML file in the current directory or ./playbooks that contains plays.
4. Tags: every tag the playbook uses (plays, roles, blocks, imports), or none to run all tags.
5. Mode: check mode (--check --diff) or live mode (--diff).

Live runs wait a few seconds so you can back out. Each command is saved to .ansible-interactive-history, so next time you can re-run it in check or live mode.

Requirements

• An Apple Silicon Mac or Linux (on Windows, use WSL: Ansible can't run on Windows directly). Intel Macs can use the npm install.
• Ansible (ansible-core 2.12 or newer) on your PATH. The tool uses ansible-inventory, ansible-config and ansible-playbook --list-tags to read your project, so it sees what Ansible sees.

Install

curl -fsSL https://github.com/glhd/ansible-interactive/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

This downloads the single-file binary for your platform, checks it against the release's SHA256SUMS.txt, and puts it in ~/.local/bin (or /usr/local/bin as root). It doesn't need Node.js. Options:

# A specific version
curl -fsSL https://github.com/glhd/ansible-interactive/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh -s 1.2.0

# Somewhere else
curl -fsSL https://github.com/glhd/ansible-interactive/releases/latest/download/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR=/opt/bin sh

You can also download a binary from the releases page. Builds exist for Apple Silicon Macs and Linux (x64 and arm64, glibc and musl). The macOS binary is signed and notarized by Apple. On an Intel Mac, install with npm instead.

To install with npm instead (needs Node.js 22 or newer):

npm install --global github:glhd/ansible-interactive

Updates

Once a day, ansible-interactive asks GitHub whether a new release is out. If one is, it says so after your run finishes. The check never delays or blocks a run.

ansible-interactive update         # install the latest release
ansible-interactive update 1.2.0   # install a specific version

Variable	Effect
ANSIBLE_INTERACTIVE_AUTO_UPDATE=1	Install new releases after each run, without asking
ANSIBLE_INTERACTIVE_DISABLE_UPDATE_CHECK=1	Never check for updates (also off when CI is set)

Updates check the download against SHA256SUMS.txt before replacing the binary. npm installs can't update themselves; the notice tells you the npm command instead.

Usage

Run it from your Ansible project:

ansible-interactive

Option	Description
-i, --inventory <path>	Inventory source to use (repeatable)
-p, --playbook <path>	Playbook to run
--no-history	Don't read or write .ansible-interactive-history
--delay <seconds>	Pause before a live run starts (default: 3)
-v, --verbose	Show stack traces on errors

Anything after -- goes to ansible-playbook as-is:

ansible-interactive -- --ask-become-pass -e env=staging

Keys

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Move
space	Select (in lists that allow several)
ctrl+a	Select all shown
any text	Filter the list
enter	Confirm
esc	Clear the filter, or go back a step
ctrl+c	Quit

Development

npm install
npm run dev              # run from source
npm test
npm run build            # compile to dist/
npm run build:binaries   # standalone binaries in build/ (needs Bun)

Releasing

Publish a release on GitHub with a new tag such as v1.2.0, or v1.2.0-beta.1 for a pre-release. Pushing the tag yourself works too:

git tag v1.2.0 && git push origin v1.2.0

The tag starts the release workflow. It builds with the tag's version, so you don't need to change package.json first. It runs the tests, builds the binaries with bun build --compile, signs and notarizes the macOS binary, and adds the binaries, SHA256SUMS.txt and install.sh to the release (creating it if you only pushed a tag). Finally it sets package.json on the default branch to the new version, unless that's already newer.

Tags with a hyphen become pre-releases, which the installer and update check skip. To rebuild an existing tag, run the workflow by hand from the Actions tab and enter the tag.

Signing the macOS binary needs these repository secrets:

Secret	Contents
MACOS_CERTIFICATE_P12	Developer ID Application certificate as a base64-encoded .p12
MACOS_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD	Password for the .p12
KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD	Any password, for the temporary keychain on the runner
ASC_KEY_ID	App Store Connect API key ID, for notarization
ASC_ISSUER_ID	App Store Connect API issuer ID
ASC_PRIVATE_KEY	Contents of the App Store Connect API .p8 key

The release fails early if any of them is missing.