create-cratebase

Scaffold a new app on Cratebase, a self-hostable Rust backend, in one command.

bun create cratebase my-app
# or: npm create cratebase@latest my-app
# or: pnpm create cratebase my-app
# or: yarn create cratebase my-app

Interactive by default (project name, template, package manager, whether to install dependencies and run git init), or fully non-interactive:

bun create cratebase my-app --template nextjs --pm bun --yes

Usage:
  bun create cratebase <project-directory> [options]

Options:
  -t, --template <name>   Template: nextjs, vite-react, tanstack-start, expo
      --pm <name>         Package manager: bun, npm, pnpm, yarn (default: the one you ran this with)
  -y, --yes               Skip prompts, accept defaults for anything unset
      --force             Empty the target directory if it isn't empty (keeps .git)
      --no-install        Skip installing dependencies
      --no-git            Skip `git init`
  -h, --help              Print this help
  -v, --version           Print the CLI version

Without a terminal (CI, pipes) the prompts are skipped as if --yes was passed. A non-empty target directory is never touched unless you confirm in the prompt or pass --force.

Templates

• nextjs — Next.js (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind. Full feature set: password/OTP/magic-link/OAuth auth with TOTP challenge handling, a protected realtime dashboard, file upload, full-text search, a notifications bell, and an SSR-safe CratebaseProvider boundary.
• vite-react — Vite + React, TypeScript, Tailwind. The same feature set as nextjs, as a client-only SPA (react-router-dom).
• tanstack-start — TanStack Start on Cloudflare Workers, TypeScript, Tailwind. Server-rendered pages with HttpOnly cookie sessions via @cratebase/start (sign-in/up/out server functions, authMiddleware, a public feed and a guarded dashboard).
• expo — Expo Router, TypeScript. Kept lean: password + email-code (OTP) sign-in, AsyncAuthStore, and a realtime notes list. Its README documents how to add magic link, OAuth, TOTP, file upload, search, and notifications with the same @cratebase/client/@cratebase/react calls the web templates use.

Every template ships a schema.json, cb_seed/ demo data, cb_hooks/welcome.cb.js, .env.example, and a dev script that runs cratebase dev and the frontend together — see each template's own README for its 60-second quickstart and deploy notes. Full comparison: Starter kits on the docs site.

Development

This package is part of the Cratebase repo's root bun workspace.

bun install
bun run --cwd packages/create-cratebase typecheck
bun run --cwd packages/create-cratebase test    # bun test
bun run --cwd packages/create-cratebase build   # emit dist/
bun run --cwd packages/create-cratebase dev -- /tmp/my-app --template nextjs --yes

bun run create-cratebase:check from the repo root runs typecheck, test, and build in one command (also wired into CI, alongside a matrix job that scaffolds each template and runs its own typecheck/build).

Versioning

This package versions independently from the cratebase server binary and from the SDK packages (@cratebase/client, @cratebase/react, @cratebase/start) — it's a scaffolding CLI, not a build artifact of the Rust workspace or a runtime dependency of anything else. Publishing is triggered by pushing a create-cratebase-v<version> tag (see .github/workflows/publish-create-cratebase.yml), kept separate from the server's own v* tags and the SDK packages' client-v*/react-v*/ start-v*/schema-v*, so none of these release trains block on each other.