Develop and Build

The daily loop (develop, check, bundle, tail) plus scaffolding new workers.

base develop: The dev server

npx base develop app

Loads settings.ts, resolves the server configuration, and runs your worker locally — on Cloudflare's workerd runtime via wrangler dev by default, or as a Node process with --platform node (same app model, the platform delegate does the adapting).

Ports come from settings, not flags. The dev server listens on settings.server['@default'].port; the debugger's inspector port is settings.server['@default'].inspectorPort, defaulting to port + 10000 (a worker on 3000 exposes its inspector on 13000). There is no --port flag — the settings file is the single source of truth the CLI and runtime share.

Options you'll actually use:

  • --run-config <name> (-c): use a different named server configuration than '@default'.
  • --remote: develop against real resources on Cloudflare's network instead of local simulations.
  • --test-scheduled: enables triggering cron handlers by hand; prints the http://localhost:<port>/__scheduled?cron=... URL to hit.
  • --persist-to <dir>: override where local D1/KV/R2/DO state lives (defaults to the workspace's base.persistTo).

HTTPS and a custom host come from settings too: server: { '@default': { protocol: 'https', keyPath, certificatePath, host } }.

base check: Validate before you run

npx base check app
npx base check --all-workers

The pre-flight validator. It loads your settings, boots the framework's configuration, and cross-checks everything that can drift:

  • wrangler.toml bindings against settings: queues (producers and consumers), KV namespaces, R2 buckets, D1 databases, Durable Objects, containers, and RPC service bindings all must exist for what your settings declare.
  • Module config validators: every registered module's cli.configValidators run with your environment and bindings.
  • ORM schema freshness: schema.generated.ts must match your entities (it tells you the exact schema:generate command if not).
  • GraphQL schema drift: the committed SDL baseline must be compatible.

Run it in CI and before deploys (deploys run it automatically). A worker whose deployEnvironment excludes the target environment is skipped, not failed.

base bundle: Build and inspect the bundle

npx base bundle app
npx base bundle app --analyze            # per-package bundle-size breakdown
npx base bundle app --analyze --expand   # per-file rows

Produces workers/app/build/index.js (+ sourcemap). By default it builds through wrangler's own pipeline (the same bundle a deploy would produce) so --analyze numbers are honest. --minify, --tree-shake, and --watch switch to a direct esbuild build for faster iteration.

base tail: Live production logs

npx base tail app -e Production
npx base tail app -e Production --status error --search "timeout"

Streams the deployed worker's logs, with filters for status, method, header, IP (--ip self), text search, sampling rate, and worker version. Pass -e explicitly — the environment defaults to Development, so an unqualified base tail app tails your dev worker, not the deployed one. One caveat: it tails by the worker's directory name — if your wrangler.toml gives environments different names, tail the right one from wrangler directly.

Scaffolding

npx @system-inc/base-cli workspace create my-app   # a new workspace + starter worker
npx base worker create billing                      # another worker in this workspace

workspace create takes --name, --starter (the first worker's name, default app), --port (default 3000), --no-install, and --force. worker create takes --port and --force, and prints the two commands to run next. Every worker is born with settings.ts, index.ts, wrangler.toml, env.toml, an example service pair, and an integration test.

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