Put on your headphones and let Frank Sinatra take you on a journey with the timeless classic Fly Me to the Moon. Inspired by the legendary singer, the Ruby gem Sinatra has long been the go-to choice for lightweight web applications. Now it has a companion: Sinatra To The Moon.

Built on top of Sinatra, Sinatra To The Moon is an opinionated scaffold generator that embraces the philosophy that not every project needs the weight of Rails. Sometimes, all you need is a focused starting point that lets you build quickly, experiment freely, and, as the song says, play among the stars.

This gem generates concise, modular, and testable Sinatra web applications, REST APIs, and GraphQL APIs through the flyme command. It is not a runtime framework: generated applications use ordinary Sinatra and remain independent of sinatra_to_the_moon after generation.

This project is the new version of sinatra-scaffold. It continues the original scaffold generator under a new gem name and adds the flyme CLI, modular project profiles, generated-project testing, GraphQL support, and a default MVC-style web application with Tailwind CSS.

Existing users should install sinatra_to_the_moon for future updates. The original sinatra-scaffold gem remains available for projects that depend on the 0.1.x releases.

gem install sinatra_to_the_moon

Create an MVC-style Sinatra web app with ERB views and Tailwind CSS:

flyme new moon_app

The web profile is the default. It uses the latest tailwindcss-ruby release, so no Node.js toolchain is required. Start its CSS watcher with:

cd moon_app
bundle exec rake assets:watch

Create a minimal API-shaped scaffold without views:

flyme new moon_service --minimal

Create a REST API:

flyme new moon_api --api

Create a GraphQL API:

flyme new moon_graph --graphql

The explicit profile form is also available:

flyme new moon_api --profile api

Preview files without writing them:

flyme new moon_app --dry-run

flyme refuses to write into an existing destination unless --force is passed.

After generation:

cd moon_app
bundle install
bundle exec rackup

Run the generated application checks with:

bundle exec rake

Generated projects use modules for stateless behavior. Classes are reserved for objects that retain state and framework contracts such as Sinatra::Base and GraphQL::Schema.

Profiles remain small:

• web is the default and provides MVC-style modules, ERB views, and Tailwind CSS.
• minimal provides a modular Sinatra app and health endpoint.
• api adds JSON request/response helpers and example REST routes.
• graphql adds a GraphQL schema and endpoint.

Every generated project includes request specs and RuboCop configuration.

The generator follows the same approach: Thor owns the stateful CLI class, while project validation, template rendering, and generation are organized as stateless modules. why-classes checks this convention during development.

Install dependencies and run every check:

bundle install
bundle exec rake

The default task runs RSpec, RuboCop, and why-classes.

Build the gem locally with:

gem build sinatra_to_the_moon.gemspec

Generator specs create every profile in a temporary directory, run its request specs, and lint the resulting application. Changes to CLI behavior or templates should include regression coverage.

See AGENTS.md for contributor conventions. AI-assisted work should also follow CLAUDE.md.