Install hof with Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• hof

Project history

The hof repository history begins in 2020, and the tag stream moved quickly through early 0.x releases. The project emerged around CUE-powered code generation: describing application data and generator configuration declaratively, then producing code and other files from templates while preserving custom edits.

By the 0.6 series, the official documentation presented hof as more than a generator. The README and documentation list data modeling, code generation, task workflows, CUE command helpers, creators, modules, a terminal interface, and LLM-assisted chat as parts of the same CUE-centered developer experience.

Adoption history

hof's adoption appears to be niche and developer-workflow oriented rather than broad platform infrastructure. The official README points users to GitHub releases as the preferred binary source and includes Homebrew installation through the hofstadter-io tap, while the supplied package facts show distribution through Homebrew, MacPorts, and Nix.

The project is most likely to be adopted by teams already interested in CUE, schema-first application generation, declarative data models, and regenerable code. Its package-manager presence matters because a code generator has to be easy to pin in CI, local developer environments, and project bootstrap scripts.

How it is used

Common hof usage centers on the hof CLI: hof gen for code generation, hof datamodel for model checkpoints and diffs, hof flow for CUE-powered workflows, hof mod for CUE module dependency management, and hof create for starter kits or blueprints. Documentation emphasizes committing generated code and using CUE as a source of truth.

The data-modeling docs are especially package-relevant because they describe commands that track history and include that history during code generation so migrations and conversion functions can be produced. That makes hof less like a one-shot scaffolder and more like a development-time tool that stays in the project loop.

Why package nerds care

hof is package-nerd significant as a Go-distributed CLI in the CUE ecosystem. It packages a broad workflow into one executable, which is attractive for reproducible dev shells and CI but also means version pinning matters when generator output, templates, or model-history behavior changes.

For people who track language tooling, hof is also a marker of CUE's spread beyond validation into code generation, task orchestration, module workflows, and AI-assisted developer loops.

Timeline

• 2020: Repository history begins and v0.1.0 tag appears.
• 2021: v0.6.0 tag appears after the early generator-focused 0.x series.
• 2022: v0.6.1 release notes introduced data-modeling commands in the 0.6 line.
• 2023: v0.6.8 tag appears after a long beta and release-candidate cycle.
• 2024: v0.6.9 tag appears.
• 2026: v0.7.0 alpha tags appear with stabilizing work on newer features.

Related projects

• CUE is the central related project because hof uses it as the declarative substrate. The hofmod-cli generator is related as an official Hofstadter generator for Go CLI projects. Dagger, VS Code extension work, and CUE module workflows are adjacent surfaces named by the official README.

Sources

• https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof - official README for project scope, commands, installation, and CUE positioning.
• https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof/tags - official tag history.
• https://hofstadter.io/ - official documentation home for CUE-powered workflows and use cases.
• https://hofstadter.io/data-modeling/commands/ - official data-modeling command docs and history-tracking behavior.