[cowboyd]

Motivation

Configliere could bind named options but had no public positional-argument definition. Adding positional readers also exposes a real ambiguity: an argument must not steal the value belonging to an option merely because the argument was declared first.

Positional arguments need to preserve route segmentation, source precedence, validation, exact model inference, and useful help output.

Approach

Model positional arguments as ordinary parameters with a CLI reader, not as a separate parsing subsystem. Route selectors are still resolved first, so a visible command word cannot be consumed as data. Within the selected route segment, every unresolved reader proposes a claim against the same immutable token view; the binder commits the claim beginning earliest in argv, with declaration order breaking exact ties, then asks all remaining readers again.

This claim-arbitration model prevents positional arguments from stealing option values without teaching the binder about particular reader kinds. Failed reads retain ownership of the tokens they captured, and tokens settled in an earlier phase are never reinterpreted after dynamic expansion. Arguments otherwise follow the same route scoping, source precedence, decoding, validation, and model inference as options. Declarative syntax metadata lets help render arguments without executing or reverse-engineering their readers.

[pkg-pr-new]

Open in StackBlitz

npm i https://pkg.pr.new/configliere@27

commit: bf59fe7