Bun bun create

bun create

Create a new Bun project from a React component, a create-<template> npm package, a GitHub repo, or a local template

Template a new Bun project with bun create. This is a flexible command that can be used to create a new project from a React component, a create-<template> npm package, a GitHub repo, or a local template.

If you're looking to create a brand new empty project, use bun init.

From a React component

bun create ./MyComponent.tsx turns an existing React component into a complete dev environment with hot reload and production builds in one command.

bun create ./MyComponent.jsx # .tsx also supported

How this works

When you run bun create <component>, Bun:

1. Uses Bun's JavaScript bundler to analyze your module graph.
2. Collects all the dependencies needed to run the component.
3. Scans the exports of the entry point for a React component.
4. Generates a package.json file with the dependencies and scripts needed to run the component.
5. Installs any missing dependencies using bun install --only-missing.
6. Generates the following files:
   • ${component}.html
   • ${component}.client.tsx (entry point for the frontend)
   • ${component}.css (css file)
7. Starts a frontend dev server automatically.

Using TailwindCSS with Bun

TailwindCSS is an extremely popular utility-first CSS framework used to style web applications.

When you run bun create <component>, Bun scans your JSX/TSX file for TailwindCSS class names (and any files it imports). If it detects TailwindCSS class names, it will add the following dependencies to your package.json:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "tailwindcss": "^4",
    "bun-plugin-tailwind": "latest"
  }
}

We also configure bunfig.toml to use Bun's TailwindCSS plugin with Bun.serve()

[serve.static]
plugins = ["bun-plugin-tailwind"]

And a ${component}.css file with @import "tailwindcss"; at the top:

@import "tailwindcss";

Using shadcn/ui with Bun

shadcn/ui is an extremely popular component library tool for building web applications.

bun create <component> scans for any shadcn/ui components imported from @/components/ui.

If it finds any, it runs:

# Assuming bun detected imports to @/components/ui/accordion and @/components/ui/button
bunx shadcn@canary add accordion button # and any other components

Since shadcn/ui itself uses TailwindCSS, bun create also adds the necessary TailwindCSS dependencies to your package.json and configures bunfig.toml to use Bun's TailwindCSS plugin with Bun.serve() as described above.

Additionally, we setup the following:

• tsconfig.json to alias "@/*" to "src/*" or . (depending on if there is a src/ directory)
• components.json so that shadcn/ui knows its a shadcn/ui project
• styles/globals.css file that configures Tailwind v4 in the way that shadcn/ui expects
• ${component}.build.ts file that builds the component for production with bun-plugin-tailwind configured

bun create ./MyComponent.jsx is one of the easiest ways to run code generated from LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT locally.

From npm

bun create <template> [<destination>]

Assuming you don't have a local template with the same name, this command will download and execute the create-<template> package from npm. The following two commands will behave identically:

bun create remix
bunx create-remix

Refer to the documentation of the associated create-<template> package for complete documentation and usage instructions.

From GitHub

This will download the contents of the GitHub repo to disk.

bun create <user>/<repo>
bun create github.com/<user>/<repo>

Optionally specify a name for the destination folder. If no destination is specified, the repo name will be used.

bun create <user>/<repo> mydir
bun create github.com/<user>/<repo> mydir

Bun will perform the following steps:

• Download the template
• Copy all template files into the destination folder
• Install dependencies with bun install.
• Initialize a fresh Git repo. Opt out with the --no-git flag.
• Run the template's configured start script, if defined.

By default Bun will not overwrite any existing files. Use the --force flag to overwrite existing files.

From a local template

Bun's templater can be extended to support custom templates defined on your local file system. These templates should live in one of the following directories:

• $HOME/.bun-create/<name>: global templates
• <project root>/.bun-create/<name>: project-specific templates

You can customize the global template path by setting the BUN_CREATE_DIR environment variable.

To create a local template, navigate to $HOME/.bun-create and create a new directory with the desired name of your template.

cd $HOME/.bun-create
mkdir foo
cd foo

Then, create a package.json file in that directory with the following contents:

{
  "name": "foo"
}

You can run bun create foo elsewhere on your file system to verify that Bun is correctly finding your local template.

Setup logic

You can specify pre- and post-install setup scripts in the "bun-create" section of your local template's package.json.

{
  "name": "@bun-examples/simplereact",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "main": "index.js",
  "dependencies": {
    "react": "^17.0.2",
    "react-dom": "^17.0.2"
  },
  "bun-create": {
    "preinstall": "echo 'Installing...'", // a single command
    "postinstall": ["echo 'Done!'"], // an array of commands
    "start": "bun run echo 'Hello world!'"
  }
}

The following fields are supported. Each of these can correspond to a string or array of strings. An array of commands will be executed in order.

After cloning a template, bun create will automatically remove the "bun-create" section from package.json before writing it to the destination folder.

Reference

CLI flags

Environment variables

<Accordion title={How bun create works}> When you run bun create ${template} ${destination}, here’s what happens:

IF remote template

1. GET registry.npmjs.org/@bun-examples/${template}/latest and parse it
2. GET registry.npmjs.org/@bun-examples/${template}/-/${template}-${latestVersion}.tgz
3. Decompress & extract ${template}-${latestVersion}.tgz into ${destination}
   • If there are files that would overwrite, warn and exit unless --force is passed

IF GitHub repo

1. Download the tarball from GitHub’s API
2. Decompress & extract into ${destination}
   • If there are files that would overwrite, warn and exit unless --force is passed

ELSE IF local template

1. Open local template folder

2. Delete destination directory recursively

3. Copy files recursively using the fastest system calls available (on macOS fcopyfile and Linux, copy_file_range). Do not copy or traverse into node_modules folder if exists (this alone makes it faster than cp)

4. Parse the package.json (again!), update name to be ${basename(destination)}, remove the bun-create section from the package.json and save the updated package.json to disk.

   • IF Next.js is detected, add bun-framework-next to the list of dependencies
   • IF Create React App is detected, add the entry point in /src/index.{js,jsx,ts,tsx} to public/index.html
   • IF Relay is detected, add bun-macro-relay so that Relay works

5. Auto-detect the npm client, preferring pnpm, yarn (v1), and lastly npm

6. Run any tasks defined in "bun-create": { "preinstall" } with the npm client

7. Run ${npmClient} install unless --no-install is passed OR no dependencies are in package.json

8. Run any tasks defined in "bun-create": { "postinstall" } with the npm client

9. Run git init; git add -A .; git commit -am "Initial Commit";

   • Rename gitignore to .gitignore. NPM automatically removes .gitignore files from appearing in packages.
   • If there are dependencies, this runs in a separate thread concurrently while node_modules are being installed
   • Using libgit2 if available was tested and performed 3x slower in microbenchmarks