Concepts

How pensa works

pensa is a single Go binary that manages Python projects. It handles dependency resolution, virtual environments, package installation, and building — without requiring Go or any runtime dependencies on the user’s machine.

Design principles

• UNIX philosophy — each command does one thing well. list, show, and tree are separate commands, not modes of one command.
• CLI Guidelines — designed around clig.dev for accessible, predictable behavior.
• No configuration needed — pensa reads your existing pyproject.toml and lock files. No migration required.
• Independent — not backed by a company. Open source, community-driven.

Compatibility

pensa reads:

• pyproject.toml in both PEP 621 (uv, pip) and Poetry formats
• pensa.lock, uv.lock, and poetry.lock without re-resolving
• Python installations from pyenv, asdf, mise, homebrew, and conda

PEP compliance