CLI & templates

Scaffold a new Conexus X view in one command — asks where and which framework, fetches the template, makes it yours, installs, and tells you what to run next.

bash

npm create @conexus-x/app

Which prints something like:

text

 Conexus X  create-app v0.1.0

✔ Where should the view live? … my-view
✔ Which framework? › Next.js
✔ Template ready (@conexus-x/next-view@latest)
✔ Created my-view (my-view)
✔ Dependencies installed with npm
✔ Initialised a git repository

Done. Next:

  cd my-view
  npm run dev

Also works as npx @conexus-x/create-app my-view, and with pnpm create, yarn create or bun create — whichever package manager you invoke it with is the one it installs with.

Templates

--template	Package	What you get
next	`@conexus-x/next-view`	Next.js 16 + React 19 — pick this if your view needs a server of its own.
react	`@conexus-x/react-view`	React 19 + Vite, static output — pick this if the view only talks to Conexus X.

Templates are fetched from npm at scaffold time, not bundled into the CLI — each starter is its own repository with its own release cycle, so a template fix reaches new projects the moment it’s published, without a release of this CLI. Use --template-version to pin one when you need to reproduce an older scaffold.

Non-interactive usage

Every prompt has a flag, so the whole command can run unattended — in a script, in CI, in a template repository:

bash

npx @conexus-x/create-app my-view --template react --pm pnpm -y

Flag	Does
`-t, --template <name>`	template to use (next \| react)
`--template-version <range>`	version of the template package to fetch (default: latest)
`--from <path>`	use a local template directory or .tgz instead of the registry
`--name <name>`	package name for the new project (default: the directory name)
`--pm <manager>`	package manager (npm \| pnpm \| yarn \| bun)
`--no-install`	skip installing dependencies
`--no-git`	skip initialising a git repository
`-y, --yes`	accept the defaults and do not prompt
`--overwrite`	replace the contents of a non-empty directory

A non-interactive environment (no TTY, or CI set) is detected automatically and takes the defaults rather than hanging on a prompt no one can answer.

What scaffolding changes in the template

The template is a package we publish, so its identity has to be replaced or a new project inherits ours:

Field	Becomes
package.json name	your project name
package.json version	0.1.0
package.json private	true
package.json files / publishConfig / keywords / license	removed
conexus.manifest.json id, name	derived from your project name
conexus.manifest.json entry, description, publisher	blanked

private: true and the removed publishConfig are the ones that matter: without them, your first npm publish would go to our scope. entry is blanked rather than guessed — it’s the origin the view bridge pins for postMessage, so a wrong value there is a security setting that silently fails to match at review time. Fill it in yourself once you know where the view will be served from.

Local template development

To work on a template before publishing it:

bash

npx @conexus-x/create-app my-view --from ../conexus-x-np      # a checkout
npx @conexus-x/create-app my-view --from ./template.tgz       # a packed tarball

--from a directory skips node_modules, dist, .next, .git and lockfiles.

Behaviour worth knowing

A failed fetch cleans up — a directory the command created is removed; one that already existed never is.
A failed install does not clean up — the project is already on disk and re-running the install is a one-line fix.
--overwrite empties the target but keeps .git — never the repository history of a directory you had already initialised.
It refuses to empty a drive root or your home directory, whatever the arguments say.
No shell: true anywhere — arguments are passed as arrays, so a path containing a space or an ampersand can never become two arguments or two commands.

Requirements

Node 20.9 or newer, checked at startup with a message that names your version.