Using a "generator" concept inspired by Ruby on Rails,[11] Yeoman first creates a basic project structure with vendor libraries included.

Yeoman also runs interactively, asking the developer if they would like additional components such as Twitter Bootstrap or RequireJS (a library to support Asynchronous Module Definition) included.

More sophisticated generators exist, such as ones which scaffold out a client-side MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework, such as the AngularJS or Backbone JavaScript libraries.

Yeoman lints code for potential problems using JSHint, runs unit tests, and provides a development server for working on an application.

[14] Some of the primary contributors are on the Google Chrome Developer Relations team, such as Addy Osmani, Paul Irish, and Eric Bidelman.