Convert text to the NATO phonetic alphabet from the command line.

(Blatently vibe-coded with Claude)

Spell out any text letter-by-letter using the standard NATO phonetic alphabet:

$ nato hello
H - Hotel
E - Echo
L - Lima
L - Lima
O - Oscar

Digits use the ICAO standard words (0 → Zero, 9 → Niner). Spaces are silently skipped; any other unrecognised character prints (no NATO equivalent).

For fun.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/ubahmapk/nato
cd nato
cargo install --path .

A pre-built image is published to the GitHub Container Registry and serves the web interface (Svelte + WASM) via Caddy.

Local testing — no domain or TLS configuration required:

docker run -p 8080:80 ghcr.io/ubahmapk/nato

Open http://localhost:8080. Caddy automatically uses its internal CA.

Production deployment — custom domain with Let's Encrypt TLS via Route53 DNS-01:

SITE_DOMAIN=nato.example.com \
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIA... \
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=... \
AWS_REGION=us-east-1 \
docker compose -f web/docker-compose.yml up -d

The caddy_data volume holds TLS certificates — do not delete it between restarts or Let's Encrypt rate limits may apply.

Caddy uses the Route53 DNS-01 challenge to obtain and renew certificates. The AWS identity must have permission to write _acme-challenge TXT records in your hosted zone.

Create the least-privilege policy with the provided script (requires the AWS CLI):

./infrastructure/create-iam-policy.sh Z1D633PJN98FT9   # replace with your hosted zone ID

Then attach the printed policy ARN to the IAM role or user that the container authenticates as.

Prefer an IAM role (EC2 instance role or ECS task role) over static keys — no credentials need to appear in the environment. If you must use static keys, pass them via AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY in the compose env block.

Pass text as an argument:

nato SOS
nato "call sign bravo"
nato 007

Or pipe text from stdin — useful in scripts:

echo "alpha bravo" | nato
printf "hello" | nato

When no argument is given the tool reads one line from stdin.

The conversion logic lives entirely in src/lib.rs as a public library, separate from the CLI in src/main.rs. The core function convert() returns structured data (Vec<NatoEntry>) rather than a pre-formatted string, so future interfaces — a web API, a GUI, a WASM module — can call the same engine and format the output however they need.

• Additional output modes (--format json, --format compact)
• Multi-line stdin support (process all lines, not just the first)
• Web interface (WASM or small HTTP server)
• GUI front-end
• Full punctuation support (ITU/ICAO special characters)

This project is licensed under the MIT License.