Cookiecutter takes a template provided as a directory structure with template-files. Templates can be located in the filesystem, as a ZIP-file or on a VCS-Server (Git/Hg) like GitHub. It reads a settings file and prompts the user interactively whether or not to change the settings. Then it takes both and generates an output directory structure from it. Additionally the template can provide code (Python or shell-script) to be executed before and after generation (pre-gen- and post-gen-hooks).