JCL - Jack-of-All Configuration Language

A powerful, flexible configuration language designed for modern infrastructure and application configuration.

Features

• Simple & Readable - Clean syntax that’s easy to learn and understand
• Powerful Functions - 70+ built-in functions for string manipulation, encoding, hashing, and more
• Type Safe - Optional type annotations and schema validation
• Developer Friendly - LSP support, syntax highlighting, formatting tools
• Cross-Platform - Bindings for Python, Node.js, Go, Java, and Ruby

Quick Example

name = "my-app"
version = "1.0.0"
port = 8080

database = (
    host = "localhost",
    port = 5432,
    name = "myapp_db"
)

features = ["auth", "api", "websockets"]

# Use powerful built-in functions
secret = base64_encode("my-secret-key")
config_hash = sha256(name + version)

Getting Started

• Installation
• Language Basics
• Built-in Functions
• CLI Tools

Tools

JCL comes with a comprehensive suite of CLI tools:

• jcl - Main CLI for evaluation and formatting
• jcl-validate - Schema validation
• jcl-migrate - Convert from JSON/YAML/TOML
• jcl-fmt - Code formatter
• jcl-watch - Auto-format on file changes
• jcl-bench - Performance benchmarking
• jcl-lsp - Language Server Protocol implementation

Why JCL?

vs JSON

• Comments and documentation
• No trailing comma issues
• More expressive syntax
• Built-in functions

vs YAML

• No indentation nightmares
• Explicit syntax
• Type safety with schemas
• Faster parsing

vs TOML

• More flexible data structures
• Function support
• Better for complex configurations
• Consistent syntax

Learn more in our comparison guide →

Community

• GitHub Repository
• Issue Tracker
• Contributing Guide

License

JCL is dual-licensed under MIT OR Apache-2.0.