Prerequisites

You need Node 20.19 or newer and pnpm 10.26 or newer. Node 24 with pnpm 10.30.1 is the recommended setup.

Node version

Node 20.19 is the minimum. Node 24 is recommended.

The generated .nvmrc selects Node 24. Older Node versions are not compatible with current pnpm releases.

Install and manage Node versions with nvm:

nvm install 24
nvm use 24
node --version   # v24.x.x

Every generated project ships with a .nvmrc file. Running nvm use inside the project root will switch to the correct version automatically.

Windows users

Use nvm-windows instead of nvm.

Node 16 is incompatible

The system default Node on some machines is 16. Generated projects require Node 20.19 or newer. Always run nvm use before any pnpm or node commands in a generated project.

pnpm

pnpm >=10.26.0 required

Generated projects support pnpm >=10.26.0. Node 20.19 users must stay on pnpm 10.26-10.x; pnpm 11 requires Node 22 or newer.

Install with Corepack

corepack enable
corepack prepare pnpm@10.30.1 --activate
pnpm --version   # 10.30.1

Install with npm

npm install -g pnpm
pnpm --version   # 10.26.0 or newer

Generated projects also use workspace-level dependency build approvals in pnpm-workspace.yaml:

allowBuilds:
  '@biomejs/biome': true
  '@parcel/watcher': true
  esbuild: true
strictDepBuilds: true

This format is compatible with pnpm 10.26+ and pnpm 11.

Playwright

You only need Playwright for E2E testing.

If you enable E2E while scaffolding, the CLI installs the browsers for you.

After cloning an E2E-enabled project, install the browsers manually:

cd my-experiment
pnpm playwright install

This downloads Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Install only Chromium when you want the browser used by the generated config:

pnpm playwright install chromium

Default browser

The generated playwright.config.js uses Desktop Chrome only. You do not need all three browsers for smoke testing.

Verification

Run these commands to confirm your environment is ready:

node --version   # v20.19.x or newer
pnpm --version   # 10.26.0 or newer

Once both pass, continue to Installation.