Very Good CLI 1.0.0: A Stable Foundation for Flutter and Dart Development

Starting a new Flutter project means making dozens of decisions before writing a single line of product code: folder structure, linting rules, test configuration, CI setup, coverage thresholds. Every team resolves these differently, and every new project risks drifting from the patterns that worked last time.

‍

Very Good CLI is a Flutter and Dart command-line tool that encodes those decisions into a repeatable starting point. It provides project templates, testing utilities, and workflow automation that embody Very Good Ventures' best practices for building production software.

‍

With v1.0.0, we are formally committing to a stable API surface, backward compatibility, and semantic versioning — so your team can depend on the tool the same way you depend on the code it generates.

What's New in 1.0.0

This release focuses on improving the developer experience, expanding functionality, and ensuring consistent cross-platform support.

Enhanced Testing Experience

At VGV, we believe in shipping code with full test coverage. These updates make hitting that bar faster and more reliable across every platform your team targets.

‍

• Fail-Fast Mode: The new --fail-fast flag stops test execution on the first failure, helping you pinpoint failures as soon as they appear. If you have ever waited through a full test suite only to discover the problem was in the first file, this flag cuts that feedback loop from minutes to seconds — especially valuable in CI where every minute costs queue time. For more on optimizing your test workflow, see how to supercharge your Flutter tests with Very Good CLI.
  ‍
• Improved Coverage Exclusions: The --exclude-coverage flag now ships with clearer documentation and inline glob pattern examples — for instance, --exclude-coverage "**/*.g.dart" to skip generated files. If your project uses Very Good Coverage to enforce a code coverage threshold, these exclusions let you focus the metric on the code that actually matters.
  ‍
• Granular Coverage Collection: The new --collect-coverage-from option lets you choose whether coverage is collected from imported files only or all files in the project, giving you more control over your coverage reports.

A huge thank you to @meylis1998 (https://github.com/meylis1998) for contributing these amazing enhancements! We are incredibly grateful for our community and their valuable contributions to the project.
‍

• Windows CI Support: Before this release, certain very_good test invocations could fail on Windows CI runners due to path-handling inconsistencies across operating systems. We fixed the underlying path normalization so tests now run consistently on Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you are setting up cross-platform CI pipelines, our GitHub Actions guide for Flutter apps covers the broader automation patterns.

Quality of Life Improvements

We also included smaller updates focused on improving the overall developer experience and day-to-day usability of the CLI.

‍

For example, the Enhanced License Reporting feature, authored by community member Lukáš Šimon (https://github.com/mendoxe), now includes a new --reporter option for the very_good packages check licenses command.

‍

This option allows you to output a full list of all third-party package licenses, rather than just a count of the distinct licenses, which is useful for detailed compliance reporting.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) Integration

We have added a custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built directly into Very Good CLI. Unlike IDE-specific MCP configurations, this integration travels with the tool itself — it works in your terminal, in CI, and in any editor that supports MCP. You can connect MCP-compatible tools (such as Claude, Cursor, or other AI assistants) to run CLI commands, inspect project structure, and automate repetitive scaffolding tasks without leaving your workflow.

‍

This is the same architectural approach we discussed in 7 MCP Servers Every Dart and Flutter Developer Should Know, now applied to the CLI itself. The new AGENTS.md documentation in the repository explains how to configure AI agents to work with Very Good CLI, making this one of the first Flutter developer tools to ship dedicated agentic workflow documentation alongside a stable release.

Latest Flutter and Dependencies

All templates now target the latest stable Flutter ecosystem:
‍

• Flutter 3.41: New projects start on a current, well-supported foundation with the latest performance and rendering improvements. See the Flutter release notes for full details on what shipped.
  ‍
• Very Good Analysis v10.2.0: Upgraded to the latest version of our opinionated linting rules, keeping code style consistent across the team. For background on the philosophy behind these rules, read Introducing Very Good Analysis.

Breaking Changes and Deprecations

With the commitment to stability that comes with v1.0.0, we have also taken the opportunity to streamline our offerings and focus our maintenance efforts. We are actively reviewing our priorities and projects to ensure we are focusing on the tools and templates that provide the most value and make the most sense to maintain and continue moving forward.

Deprecating very_good_wear_app

The very_good_wear_app template has been officially deprecated and removed from the core Very Good CLI. This template provided scaffolding for Wear OS applications.

While we believe in the potential of the Wear OS platform, the template did not see enough community adoption to justify the continuous maintenance burden alongside our other core templates.

The template remains available and accessible for use under the Very Good Templates repository if you need to access it for existing or new projects. However, it will no longer receive updates or official support through the Very Good CLI.

Why Version 1.0.0?

Version 1.0.0 is a significant milestone. It represents:

‍

• Stability: Very Good CLI has proven itself in production across real projects and is ready for critical work.
  ‍
• Maturity: The core feature set is complete and covers the full lifecycle of Flutter and Dart development — scaffolding, testing, linting, and now AI-assisted workflows.
  ‍
• Commitment: We are committed to backward compatibility and semantic versioning, so upgrades will not break your projects.

This is part of VGV's broader open source commitment: a maintained, interconnected suite of tools that teams can adopt with confidence.

Getting Started

Getting started takes a single command. Activate the package globally using:

‍

dart pub global activate very_good_cli

‍

If you are using Dart 3.10 or higher, you can also run:

‍

dart install very_good_cli

‍

Then create your first Flutter project:

‍

very_good create flutter_app my_app

‍

For additional options (such as setting the org identifier), run very_good create flutter_app --help.

‍

For full documentation, visit the Very Good CLI docs or browse the Very Good CLI GitHub repository.

Community and Feedback

Very Good CLI is open source, and every release is shaped by feedback from the Flutter community. We would love to hear your feedback, bug reports, and feature requests — open an issue on GitHub.

‍

There is more to come. We will keep expanding Very Good CLI with new templates, tighter tooling, and deeper integration with the Flutter and Dart ecosystem. When you adopt a 1.0.0 tool, you are placing trust in its maintainers. We take that seriously — and we are building alongside you.

‍

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this release possible. Here's to building very good apps together.

‍