Get Started

Install Snowpack

# using npm
npm install --save-dev snowpack

# using yarn
yarn add --dev snowpack

Snowpack can also be installed globally via npm install -g snowpack. But, we recommend installing locally in every project via --save-dev/--dev. You can run the Snowpack CLI locally via package.json “scripts”, npm’s npx snowpack, or via yarn snowpack.

Quick Start

Here’s a short list of what you can do with Snowpack:

# Start your dev server, load your site locally
snowpack dev

# Build your site for production
snowpack build

# Build your site, but watch the file system and rebuild when files change.
# Great for local development with your own dev server (ex: Rails)
snowpack build --watch

# See more helpful info
snowpack --help

Create Snowpack App (CSA)

The easiest way to get started with Snowpack is via Create Snowpack App (CSA). CSA automatically initializes a starter application for you with a pre-configured, Snowpack-powered dev environment.

If you’ve ever used Create React App, this is a lot like that!

npx create-snowpack-app new-dir --template [SELECT FROM BELOW] [--use-yarn]

Official App Templates

Migrating an Existing App

Migrating an existing app to Snowpack is meant to be painless, since Snowpack supports most features and build tools that you’re already using today (Babel, PostCSS, etc). If this is your first time using Snowpack you should start with a Create Snowpack App (CSA) template, copy over your “src” & “public” files from your old app, and then run snowpack dev, troubleshooting any remaining issues.

CSA is a good starting point for an existing application because it has a few common tools (like Babel) built in by default to replicate the full feature set of a traditional bundled app. CSA is also meant to be a drop-in replacement for Create React App, so any existing Create React App project should run via CSA with zero changes needed.

If you run into issues, search the rest of our docs site for information about importing CSS from JS and from CSS, asset references, and more.