Every software project is only as good as it’s weakest piece of code. In many projects, the core codebase is often developed with high standards, utilizing powerful tooling like linters, formatters and testing frameworks. On the other hand, utility scripts, used for simple, yet crucial, operations like building docker images, deploying the code or running some maintenance tasks, often fall short of the same standards. These scripts, typically written in Bash, are often very flaky and challenging to debug – especially when running on remote CI machines. Python comes with the great (yet relatively low level) “subprocess” module, which provides an API for executing Bash commands via Python and interacting with the shell. In this talk, we’ll show how a small utility library, which wraps the subprocess module and exposes an even simpler and more robust API, can be used to write beautiful, safe and sane Bash-Python hybrid scripts. These scripts retain the raw power of Bash commands, and at the same time leverage the best of the Python ecosystem. The result is a much more flexible and reliable solution for project operations.