Quickstart

Go from nothing to a deployed Sproutboat app in four commands.

Prerequisites

Nothing but a package manager. npm install -g sproutboat, npx sproutboat, bunx sproutboat, or pnpm dlx sproutboat all resolve a native, self-contained binary for your platform — no Bun runtime required to run it.
No C compiler needed either, for dev, --target host, or --standalone builds on this machine: the CLI carries its own Zig, used as a fallback cross-compiler when it can’t find one already installed.
An account on a control plane you (or your admin) run. See Get access if you don’t have one yet.

Zero to deployed

bunx sproutboat login --api-url https://control.example.com

npx sproutboat login --api-url https://control.example.com

This is the only step that needs a browser tab where you are signed in to the dashboard. It writes a long-lived token to ~/.config/sproutboat/credentials.json.

Scaffold a project

bunx sproutboat init hello
cd hello

npx sproutboat init hello
cd hello

Writes sproutboat.jsonc and src/index.js under ./hello.

Edit the handler

Open src/index.js and make your changes. See The handler for the contract.

Deploy

bunx sproutboat deploy

npx sproutboat deploy

deploy prints the URL and waits until it serves. Re-running with no changes is a no-op.

What’s next

Standalone binaries

Run Sproutboat without a control plane at all — one executable, your own box.

Bindings

Attach KV, D1, R2, queues, and more to your handler.