create-vela

A thin wrapper around vela create, so a new VelaStack project can be scaffolded without installing anything first.

npm create vela my-app

Equivalent to npx vela create my-app. Every flag vela create takes works here — note that npm needs -- before them:

npm create vela my-app -- --template static

Other package managers follow the same convention:

pnpm create vela my-app
yarn create vela my-app
bun create vela my-app

Everything past the scaffolding step lives in the vela CLI itself; see velastack/vela for the rest.

How it works

bin.js splices create into process.argv and loads the vela bin in-process, so prompts, colors, and the exit code pass straight through without the cost of a second Node process. It finds that bin by reading the path vela declares in its own manifest, rather than hardcoding one.

It always runs the newest vela. npx caches create-vela by its own version and never re-resolves its dependencies, so the vela installed beside it is whatever was newest the first time npm create vela ran on that machine. Before loading it, bin.js asks the registry for vela's latest (honouring npm_config_registry, with a three-second timeout). When that is newer, it runs npx vela@<latest> create instead, through npm's own npx and this Node, and passes the exit code back. When the registry can't be reached, the installed vela runs. So create-vela only needs a release when bin.js changes, not for every vela release.

The vela dependency is an open range (>=), so a first install gets the newest release and skips the second step. CI smoke-tests a real scaffold down both paths (CREATE_VELA_LATEST=1 forces the registry one), and a release is blocked if the range no longer reaches the current vela.