dAppBooster installer

Agent-friendly installer that scaffolds a Web3 dApp. It supports two stacks — pick one per run, either through the interactive wizard or with a single flag (--evm / --canton). It works interactively (a React + Ink TUI) and non-interactively (flag-driven, JSON output) for CI and AI agents.

• EVM — the original dAppBooster for Ethereum, Polygon, Base, and other EVM chains.
• Canton — dAppBooster for Canton: Daml ledger, Carpincho wallet, off-chain services.

Choose your stack

pnpm dlx dappbooster --evm      # EVM stack
pnpm dlx dappbooster --canton   # Canton stack

Omit the flag to be prompted for the stack in the wizard. Jump to the EVM stack or Canton stack section for the details of each.

Requirements

• Node >= 20
• pnpm (used by the installer itself; the scaffolded project uses pnpm or npm depending on the stack)

Quick start (interactive)

pnpm dlx dappbooster

The wizard prompts for stack → project name → mode (Canton offers default / full / custom; EVM offers full / custom) → features, then clones, installs, cleans up, and prints next steps. Pass --evm or --canton to skip the stack prompt.

dAppBooster documentation: https://docs.dappbooster.dev/

Agents & CI (non-interactive)

Non-interactive mode activates automatically when stdout is not a TTY, or explicitly with --ni. It returns JSON on stdout and a non-zero exit code on error.

Discover stacks and features first, then install:

pnpm dlx dappbooster --info                  # all stacks + features as JSON
pnpm dlx dappbooster --info --stack canton   # filter to one stack (or --info --canton)

Flag	Purpose
--canton / --evm	Pick the stack (mutually exclusive shortcuts)
--stack <evm|canton>	Pick the stack by name (useful when scripting)
--name <name>	Project directory name (/^[a-zA-Z0-9_]+$/)
--mode <full|default|custom>	default (Canton only) keeps the recommended set; full installs every feature; custom needs --features
--features <a,b,c>	Comma-separated feature keys (custom mode only)
--ni	Force non-interactive mode

Mixing flags that disagree (--canton --evm, or --canton --stack evm) is an error. Each stack accepts only its own feature keys, and validation errors name the stack:

{
  "success": false,
  "error": "Unknown features for stack 'canton': subgraph. Valid features: github, precommit, carpincho, llm"
}

Any failure returns { "success": false, "error": "..." } with exit code 1 (e.g. a missing --name).

A successful install prints:

{
  "success": true,
  "stack": "evm|canton",
  "projectName": "...",
  "mode": "full|default|custom",
  "features": ["..."],
  "path": "/absolute/path",
  "postInstall": ["..."]
}

EVM stack

pnpm dlx dappbooster --evm

Interactive (skips the stack prompt) or non-interactive:

pnpm dlx dappbooster --evm --ni --name my_dapp --mode full
pnpm dlx dappbooster --evm --ni --name my_dapp --mode custom --features demo,subgraph

Feature	Key	Default	Description
Component Demos	demo	✓	Component demos and example pages
Subgraph support	subgraph	✓	TheGraph subgraph integration
Typedoc	typedoc	✓	TypeDoc API documentation generation
Vocs	vocs	✓	Vocs documentation site
Husky	husky	✓	Git hooks with Husky, lint-staged, and commitlint

{
  "success": true,
  "stack": "evm",
  "projectName": "my_dapp",
  "mode": "full",
  "features": ["demo", "subgraph", "typedoc", "vocs", "husky"],
  "path": "/absolute/path/to/my_dapp",
  "postInstall": [
    "Provide your own API key for PUBLIC_SUBGRAPHS_API_KEY in .env.local",
    "Run pnpm subgraph-codegen from the project folder"
  ]
}

Canton stack

pnpm dlx dappbooster --canton

Interactive (skips the stack prompt) or non-interactive:

pnpm dlx dappbooster --canton --ni --name my_canton_dapp --mode default
pnpm dlx dappbooster --canton --ni --name my_canton --mode custom --features carpincho,github

Feature	Key	Default	Description
GitHub templates & workflows	github		GitHub issue/PR templates and workflows (.github)
Pre-commit hooks	precommit		Husky, lint-staged, and commitlint
Carpincho wallet	carpincho	✓	Carpincho browser-extension wallet (frontend + build tooling)
LLM & agent artifacts	llm	✓	.claude, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, architecture.md, llms.txt, …

default mode (the recommended Canton install) keeps carpincho + llm and removes github + precommit; full keeps all four; custom lets you pick (in the wizard github and precommit start unchecked). To remove the demo features (counter, sign-message) after scaffolding, follow the "Removing a feature" guide in the generated dapp/frontend/README.md — the installer never deletes demo source itself.

The Canton scaffold uses npm (a property of the generated project, not this installer). After install, review canton-barebones/.env, then bring the whole local stack up with a single command: ./scripts/dev-stack.sh up (Docker must be running). It starts the Canton + Postgres + wallet-service containers, runs the health checks, builds and deploys the quickstart-counter DAR, launches the dapp frontend (:3012), and — when carpincho is included — builds the Carpincho extension and copies it to ~/Desktop/dist-extension (load it via chrome://extensions, Developer mode → Load unpacked). Run ./scripts/dev-stack.sh with no arguments for an interactive arrow-key menu; mock-up brings up a Docker-free mocked wallet-service + Carpincho web app, and down tears everything back down.

Prefer to run the pieces by hand? The underlying npm scripts still work: npm run canton:up to start the local Canton stack and npm run app:dev for the dapp frontend, and when carpincho is included build the extension with npm run carpincho:build:extension and load carpincho-wallet/dist-extension as an unpacked browser extension.

What gets stripped:

• EVM always removes CI config (.github) and the husky/commitlint automation as hygiene.
• Canton treats .github and pre-commit hooks as optional features: default mode removes both; full keeps both; custom removes whichever you uncheck. Deselecting carpincho removes carpincho-wallet/ and its scripts (wallet:dev, carpincho:build:extension); deselecting llm removes the agent docs. Removing precommit also strips the prepare script and the husky/lint-staged/commitlint dev-dependencies from the root package.json.
• The Canton installer never deletes demo source (the counter/sign-message features) — that is user-controlled via the template's dapp/frontend/README.md.

{
  "success": true,
  "stack": "canton",
  "projectName": "my_canton_dapp",
  "mode": "default",
  "features": ["carpincho", "llm"],
  "path": "/absolute/path/to/my_canton_dapp",
  "postInstall": [
    "Review canton-barebones/.env (created from the example)",
    "Run ./scripts/dev-stack.sh up to bring up the whole local stack in one command — Docker must be running (run ./scripts/dev-stack.sh with no arguments for an interactive menu)",
    "Fallback — start each piece manually: npm run canton:up for the Canton stack, then npm run app:dev for the dapp frontend",
    "./scripts/dev-stack.sh up also builds the Carpincho extension and copies it to ~/Desktop/dist-extension (load it via chrome://extensions, Developer mode -> Load unpacked)",
    "Fallback — build it manually with npm run carpincho:build:extension, then load carpincho-wallet/dist-extension as an unpacked browser extension"
  ]
}

Repo / ref overrides (env vars)

Each stack's source repository and ref can be overridden — useful for forks, or for testing a feature branch before it lands on main.

Variable	Effect
DAPPBOOSTER_EVM_REPO_URL	Override the EVM stack git URL
DAPPBOOSTER_EVM_REF	Override the EVM stack ref (still checks out the latest tag if unset)
DAPPBOOSTER_CANTON_REPO_URL	Override the Canton stack git URL
DAPPBOOSTER_CANTON_REF	Override the Canton stack branch

DAPPBOOSTER_CANTON_REF=some-feature-branch \
  pnpm dlx dappbooster --canton --ni --name my_canton --mode full

The Canton stack defaults to BootNodeDev/cn-dappbooster on the main branch. The repo has no release tags yet, so it tracks main; once a release is tagged, switch the default to refType: 'tag-latest' (or pin a ref) in source/constants/config.ts.

Development

git clone [email protected]:BootNodeDev/dAppBoosterInstallScript.git
cd dAppBoosterInstallScript
pnpm i
node dist/cli.js

Releasing new versions to NPM

New releases are automatically uploaded to NPM via GitHub Actions.