# In Praise of PEP 723 **URL:** \ **Category:** User Feedback\ **Created:** [March 11, 2025, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039 "2025-03-11T12:27:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ssweber](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/ssweber/32/9684_2.png) [@ssweber](https://discuss.python.org/u/ssweber)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2025, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/1 "2025-03-11T12:27:38Z")
tldr: PEP 723 – Inline script metadata is a huge success. [uv’s implementation of it](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/scripts/), and `exclude-newer` tool extension is the cherry on-top. Everyone should give themselves a pat on the back! @pf_moore @ofek @brettcannon @charliermarsh and many more 🙂 Yesterday we had a script that was having problems. Went to debug, and of course I hadn’t written down the dependencies and never did have an environment for it. Before 723 this would be a chore. But now, this is easy! ```python # /// script # requires-python = "==3.10" # dependencies = [ # "gooey", # "openpyxl", # "pandas", # "requests", # "XlsxWriter", # ] # [tool.uv] # exclude-newer = "2023-01-10T00:00:00Z" # /// ``` `uv run myscript.py` So easy! And I’m not the only one. I frequent hackernews, and in years past the `mood` on python dependencies was so-so. [In this recent thread](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43095157), I was really happy to see these kind of comments: > With the advent of uv, I’m finally feeling like Python packaging is solved. As mentioned in the article, being able to have inline dependencies in a single-file Python script and running it naturally is just beautiful. > this (inline dependencies + uv’s exclude-newer) has also let me easily reconstruct some older environments in less than a minute, when I’ve been version hunting for 30-60 minutes in the past > I find this feature amazing for one-off scripts. It’s removing a cognitive burden I was unconsciously ignoring. That’s all I came to say. Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![pf\_moore](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/pf_moore/32/35_2.png) [@pf\_moore](https://discuss.python.org/u/pf_moore)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2025, 12:41pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/2 "2025-03-11T12:41:22Z")
Thanks for the kind words. It’s worth mentioning that pipx and pip-run also implement PEP 723, but I agree that `uv` is the tool that seems to have brought it to people’s attention. ---
**Author:** ![Monarch](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/monarch/32/18530_2.png) [@Monarch](https://discuss.python.org/u/Monarch)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2025, 2:37pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/3 "2025-03-11T14:37:24Z")
As another very happy user of PEP 723, I want to share the sentiment. A massive thank you to everyone who made it possible. I used to try very hard to stick to standard library for standalone scripts but that worry is now a thing of the past! ---
**Author:** ![h-vetinari](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/h-vetinari/32/1220_2.png) [@h-vetinari](https://discuss.python.org/u/h-vetinari)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2025, 11:06pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/4 "2025-03-11T23:06:57Z")
> [@ssweber](#): > > ```python > # [tool.uv] > # exclude-newer = "2023-01-10T00:00:00Z" > > ``` This is the kind of innovative and obviously useful extension that I pictured when I argued that we should stick to the successful patterns of `pyproject.toml`, rather than invent yet another one. I’m glad it’s paying off. 🙃 ---
**Author:** ![bryanweber](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/bryanweber/32/6914_2.png) [@bryanweber](https://discuss.python.org/u/bryanweber)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2025, 2:06am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/5 "2025-03-12T02:06:56Z")
I also want to pile on the praise. Thank you to everyone involved! The combination of uv that will install Python, PEP 723 to specify dependencies, and mise-en-place to install uv means I can put a Python script in a golang project and have my teammates actually use it ☺ ---
**Author:** ![rtpg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/rtpg/32/14068_2.png) [@rtpg](https://discuss.python.org/u/rtpg)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2025, 8:11am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/6 "2025-03-15T08:11:10Z")
> [@pf\_moore](#): > > It’s worth mentioning that pipx and pip-run also implement PEP 723, but I agree that `uv` is the tool that seems to have brought it to people’s attention. Kinda interesting, searching for `pipx 723` on DDG or Google only got me results for an issue with someone talking about _removing support_ for 723 until it was accepted. I keep on forgetting what 723 is even called. Properly searching for “inline script metadata” got me to [this github issue](https://github.com/pypa/pipx/issues/1594) where people are saying “we need to document it more”. Anyways, I guess it’s probably worth saying “inline script metadata” out loud a lot to help the computers put everything together? * * * Anyways, this is yet another “723 has made me very happy” post. Being able to post minimal reproductions as single files makes it a lot easier to share concerns with certain things. ---
**Author:** ![hugovk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/hugovk/32/14505_2.png) [@hugovk](https://discuss.python.org/u/hugovk)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2025, 9:24am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/7 "2025-03-15T09:24:27Z")
> [@pf\_moore](#): > > It’s worth mentioning that pipx and pip-run also implement PEP 723 And [Hatch](https://hatch.pypa.io/1.13/blog/2024/05/02/hatch-v1100/#python-script-runner) and [PDM](https://pdm-project.org/en/stable/dev/changelog/#release-v2160-2024-06-25). Thanks also from me to everyone who worked on it, it’s incredibly useful. ---
**Author:** ![potiuk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/potiuk/32/5287_2.png) [@potiuk](https://discuss.python.org/u/potiuk)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2025, 7:45am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/in-praise-of-pep-723/84039/8 "2025-03-16T07:45:44Z")
I agree, it’s **really** useful, and the most important part is the adoption among the packaging tools. For years I have always fallen back - when writing some small reusable scripts - to bash and the main reason was “very soon, what is in the standard library wil not be enough and I will have to add some dependency, so how to make it easy to run by others?” And then I usually got into a trap that I was the only one who could understand what those bash scripts were doing. That was one of the reason when I converted the development environment for Airlfow (we call it breeze as “it’s a breeze to develop airflow”) from bash years ago, when it became really unmaintainable - we had to first create an internal editable project and install it locally and that added quite a lot of friction that we had to solve (though pipx and uv tool made it very usable) But with PEP-732 Not any more for those smaller scripts - you can have a bunch of independent, small scripts that **just work** , want coloured output, add rich as inline dependency. Want to parse yaml file - add pyyaml and so on. And with `uv` automated python installation, and no need to have Python and venv managed by the users who **just** run the script, it’s short of magical experience.