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README.md

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+# tilde-launcher
+
+## background
+
+As [tilde.town](https://tilde.town) has grown over the years, many users have
+produced interesting, useful, and/or fun tools for the community to use. It
+goes like this:
+
+- person writes a tool
+- person tells people in IRC about it
+- people link it from their ~/bin or just call the person's script directly
+- someone asks for the tool to be globally linked
+- eventually ~vilmibm runs `ln -s ~/coolperson/bin/thing /usr/bin/`
+
+This works, but new users often ask "what tilde-specific commands can i run?"
+this is a good and reasonable question and it's hard to answer.
+
+## purpose
+
+`tilde-launcher` serves as a welcome mat to all things tilde.town and
+executable.
+
+## usage
+
+an interaction with `tilde-launcher` should look something like this:
+
+```bash
+$ tilde
+    Welcome to tilde.town :) this program is your gateway to town-specific
+    commands and features. Run tilde help to see the sort of things you can
+    do.
+$ tilde help
+   You can use the following commands with the tilde program:
+   
+   chat     join the local IRC server
+   contrib  run a community command like 'feels'
+   help     display this help
+   mail     check your tilde.town email
+   page     alert ~vilmibm to an emergency
+   poetry   generate poetry from cut-up text
+   toot     post a message to the community mastodon
+   tweet    post a message to the community twitter
+   wiki     access or update the town wiki
+
+   You can also run:
+
+   tilde help command
+
+   and replace "command" with one of the above commands to get help specific
+   to that command.
+$ tilde contrib
+    This command helps you run various community-maintained programs. If you
+    want to see them all, use --list
+$ tilde contrib --list
+    botany
+    feels
+    writo
+    # truncated for example's sake
+$ tilde contrib botany
+    # ...runs botany
+```
+
+## project goals
+
+- As thin as possible. No actual logic should be run here.
+- Easy to add to. Commands should be made available with symlinking.
+- Beginner friendly. Shouldn't use any words that go undefined or aren't
+  self-evident for a newcomer to Unix/Linux.
+
+## Open questions
+
+0. Should this be implemented in a shell script? Or something higher level?
+1. Does this obsolete
+   [tildetown-scripts](https://github.com/tildetown/tildetown-scripts) should
+   it?
+2. Should this eventually expose the admin functions afforded by
+   [tildetown-admin](https://github.com/tildetown/tildetown-admin)?