Homestead

Installation ​

Homestead is one small CLI plus your project directory. The CLI is the launcher; your apps, config, and the web UI live in the project, so editing homestead.config.ts updates the running site without reinstalling anything. Node.js 22.13 or newer is required at runtime (it runs the server and builds the web UI from your project).

Homestead runs on macOS and Linux (arm64 and x86-64).

Install the CLI ​

bash
npm install -g @rambleraptor/homestead-cli

This puts the homestead command on your PATH. Check it works:

bash
homestead --help

Prefer not to install globally? Skip this step and run the commands below with npx @rambleraptor/homestead-cli in place of homestead.

Run your first instance ​

bash
homestead init my-home
cd my-home
homestead start

homestead init creates a project — a homestead.config.ts that picks your apps, a package.json declaring the homestead packages, and an apps/ folder for your own — then installs the dependencies (bun install; start re-runs it automatically if it's ever missing).

homestead start boots the whole stack on one port and prints a banner:

[homestead] ready
[homestead]   app       http://localhost:3000
[homestead]   engine    http://localhost:3000/api/aep
[homestead]   login     first visit asks you to create the admin account

Open the app URL — the first visit asks you to create the admin account (email + password), and you're in. If you ever lose the password, run homestead admin reset-password from the project directory to rotate it.

Next: add your own app.

Build from source ​

Build from a checkout if you're working on Homestead itself or want unreleased changes. This path needs Node 20+ and Bun.

bash
git clone https://github.com/rambleraptor/homestead
cd homestead
make install       # install workspace dependencies

Build the launcher binary and run it:

bash
make homestead     # → bin/homestead (thin launcher; SPA builds at boot)
./bin/homestead start

To develop with hot reload instead of a compiled binary:

bash
bun packages/homestead-cli/src/cli.ts start --dev

To work on just the web app against a running backend, make dev starts the Vite dev server on port 5173.