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 (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|custom>	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: counter, e2e, 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|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 full
pnpm dlx dappbooster --canton --ni --name my_canton --mode custom --features counter,carpincho

Feature	Key	Default	Description
Counter demo	counter	✓	Counter demo dapp (frontend + Daml + wallet-service)
E2E tests	e2e	✓	Playwright end-to-end test suite (requires counter)
Carpincho wallet	carpincho	✓	Carpincho browser-extension wallet (frontend + build tooling)
LLM & agent artifacts	llm	✓	.claude, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, architecture.md, llms.txt, …

e2e drives the counter dapp, so it requires counter: requesting --features e2e auto-pulls counter in (the success JSON reports ["counter", "e2e"]), and in the wizard, deselecting counter also unchecks e2e.

The Canton scaffold uses npm (a property of the generated project, not this installer). After install: review canton-barebones/.env, run npm run canton:up to start the local Canton stack, and npm run app:dev to run the counter dapp frontend. 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:

• Always (every stack and mode): CI config (.github) and the husky/commitlint automation (.husky, .lintstagedrc.mjs, commitlint.config.js), plus their entries in the root package.json.
• Per feature (custom mode): deselecting a feature removes its files and any package.json scripts that target them — deselecting carpincho removes carpincho-wallet/ and its scripts (wallet:dev, carpincho:build:extension); deselecting llm removes the agent docs.
• A full install keeps all four features — including carpincho-wallet/ and the agent docs.

{
  "success": true,
  "stack": "canton",
  "projectName": "my_canton_dapp",
  "mode": "full",
  "features": ["counter", "e2e", "carpincho", "llm"],
  "path": "/absolute/path/to/my_canton_dapp",
  "postInstall": [
    "Review canton-barebones/.env (created from the example)",
    "Run npm run canton:up to start the local Canton stack",
    "Run npm run app:dev to start the counter dapp frontend",
    "Build the Carpincho extension with npm run carpincho:build:extension",
    "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 git@github.com: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.