Create Electron Foundation

An interactive CLI to bootstrap an Electron application.

Interactive CLI (inspired by create-t3-app) to scaffold an Electron application.

🚧 Project Status: BETA 🚧

Warning

This project was started as a learning exercise and you should use it accordingly.

The best way to implement new features / improve existing functionality is to participate 🙂

Important

This project was developed and tested entirely on macOS.

Note

Known Issues

👀 Prerequisites 👀

• nvm
  To ensure compatibility and smooth development, it's generally recommended to use a Node.js version manager. These help you easily switch between Node.js versions as needed for different projects.

  This project management is integrated with nvm and it is recommended that you have it installed on your machine when using create-electron-foundation or its scaffolded assets.

• make
  This project uses a makefile to build & manage the project. There can be issues with Node.JS installs vs NVM depending on when each were installed.

Important

Please investigate your own system to confirm you have the ability to run a makefile command.
If you are unsure please do not attempt to automatically install packages after scaffolding.

What's Included?

create-electron-foundation scaffolds a project with a sensible default stack, but gives you the flexibility to opt out of what you don't need.

• Framework: Electron (with a modern main/renderer process setup)
• Frontend: React w/TypeScript (via Vite)

You can choose to include:

• Routing: TanStack Router or React Router
• Styling: Tailwind or Vanilla CSS
• Database: SQLite*
• ORM: Drizzle ORM** (when SQLite is selected)

*optional
**optional : required if Database selected

Getting Started

To create a new Electron application, run the following command in your terminal:

npx create-electron-foundation@latest
npx create-electron-foundation # will call @latest

# to access other builds
npx create-electron-foundation@beta
npx create-electron-foundation@alpha

The CLI will guide you through a few interactive prompts to configure your project.

Quick Start (Default Configuration)

To skip the prompts and scaffold a project with the default options, use the -y flag:

npx create-electron-foundation -y

Command-Line Arguments

You can also customize your project setup directly via command-line arguments.

Argument	Alias	Description	Options	Default
[project_name]		Name of the project (positional)	string	-
--project_name		Name of the project (option)	string	-
--router		Router to use	'tanstack-router', 'react-router'	-
--styles		Styles to use	'tailwind', 'none'	-
--database		Database to use	'sqlite', 'none'	-
--orm		ORM to use	'drizzle', 'none'	-
--ide		IDE to use	'cursor', 'vscode', 'none'	-
--pkg_manager		Package manager to use	'npm'	'npm'
--initialize_git	--git	Initialize Git repository	boolean	-
--install_packages		Install packages after scaffolding	boolean	-
--ci		Run in CI mode (non-interactive)	boolean	false
-y, --yes		Skip prompts and use defaults	boolean	false
-h, --help		Show help	-	-

Examples

Contributing

This project was built to accelerate my own learning and hopefully help others. Contributions, feedback, and suggestions are highly encouraged!

Please see our Contributing Guide for more details on how to get started.

If you have an idea for an improvement or find a bug, please open an issue or submit a pull request. Your interaction is greatly appreciated.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.