Is there a better/more pythonic way to load an arbitrary set of functions from modules in another folder? - python-3.x

Question

I'm just basically asking:
if it's considered OK to use exec() in this context
if there's a better/more pythonic solution
for any input or comments on how my code could be improved
First, some context. I have main.py which basically takes input and checks to see if I've written a command. Let's say I type '/help'. The slash just tells it my input was supposed to be a command, so then it checks if a function called 'help' exists, and if so, that function will be run.
To keep things tidy in main.py, and to allow myself to add more commands easily, I have a 'commands' directory, with individual command files in it, such as help.py. help.py would look like this for example:
def help():
print("You've been helped")
So then of course, I need to import help() from help.py, which was trivial.
As I added more commands, I decided to add an init.py file where I'd keep all the command import lines of code, and then just do 'from init import *' in main.py. At first, each time I added a command, I'd add another line in init.py to import it. But that wasn't as flexible as I wanted, so I thought, there's got to be a way to just loop through all the .py files in my commands directory and import them. I struggled with this for a while but came up with a solution that works.
In the init.py snippet below, I loop through the commands directory (and a couple others, but they're irrelevant to the question), and you'll see I use the dreaded exec() function to actually import the commands.
loaded, failed = '', ''
for directory in command_directories:
command_list = os.listdir(directory)
command_list.sort()
for command_file in command_list:
if command_file.endswith(".py"):
command_name = command_file.split(".")[0]
try:
# Evil exec() hack to use variable-name directories/modules
# Haven't found a more... pythonic... way to do this
exec(f"from {directory}.{command_name} import {command_name}")
loaded = loaded + f" - Loaded: {command_name}\n"
except:
failed = failed + f" - Failed to load: {command_name}\n"
if debug == True:
for init_debug in [loaded, failed]: print(init_debug)
I use exec() because I don't know a better way to make a variable with the name of the function being loaded, so I use {command_name} in my exec string to arbitrarily evaluate the variable name that will store the function I'm importing. And... well, it works. The functions work perfectly when called from main.py, so I believe they are being imported in the correct namespace.
Obviously, exec() can be dangerous, but I'm not taking any user input into it, just file names. Filenames that I only I am creating. This program isn't being distributed, but if it was, then I believe using exec() would be bad since there's potential someone could exploit it.
If I'm wrong about something, I'd love to hear about it and get suggestions for a better implementation. Python has been very easy to pick up for me, but I'm probably missing some of the fundamentals.
I should note, I'm running python 3.10 on replit (until I move this project to another host).