rig vs make / just

make, just, and similar task runners are recipe-first: you write the commands, they run them. rig is convention-first: it already knows what build, test, run, and format mean in .NET, Node, Go, and Rust, so there's nothing to write to get started.

	make / just	rig
Model	You define every recipe	Built-in verbs, detected per ecosystem
Zero-config start	No — empty repo does nothing	Yes — rig build works immediately
Cross-ecosystem	You write per-project recipes	Same verb, right native command everywhere
Discovery	—	rig info shows what it found; Node scripts become verbs
Custom commands	The whole point	commands in .rig.json (shell / argv / per-OS)
Coverage / kill / doctor	Hand-rolled	First-class verbs

Not actually rivals

The honest framing: rig and just solve overlapping but different problems. just is a great command memory — a place to park the project-specific incantations that have no convention. rig handles the conventional dev loop (build/test/run/format/coverage) so you don't write recipes for the things every project already does the same way.

In practice they compose: let rig own the standard verbs, and put genuinely bespoke tasks in .rig.json's commands (which gives you per-OS variants, env, and cwd) — or keep a justfile alongside if you prefer. rig doesn't try to be your whole automation layer; it tries to make the 90% case need no configuration at all.