create-express-forge

⚡ Scaffold production-ready Express.js TypeScript backends in seconds

Quick Start

npx create-express-forge my-api
# or scaffold in current directory
npx create-express-forge .

What You Get

Interactive prompts let you choose:

Option	Choices
Architecture	Modular (feature-based) · MVC
ORM	Prisma · Sequelize · None
Database	PostgreSQL · MySQL · SQLite · None
Logger	Winston · Pino · None
Testing	Vitest · Jest · None
Docker	Dockerfile + docker-compose

Generated Project Includes

• ✅ TypeScript + tsx hot-reload dev server + Path Aliases (@/)
• ✅ Biome — 20x faster linting and formatting (replaces ESLint/Prettier)
• ✅ Zod env validation on startup — fails fast on bad config
• ✅ Global centralized error handler — ApiError, ZodError, unknown errors all handled
• ✅ Request validation middleware via validate(schema)
• ✅ ApiError — custom class with static factories (.notFound(), .unauthorized(), etc.)
• ✅ ApiResponse — consistent JSON response helpers
• ✅ asyncHandler — wraps async routes, no try/catch needed
• ✅ Helmet + CORS + compression + rate limiter
• ✅ Graceful shutdown (SIGTERM / SIGINT)
• ✅ Multi-stage Dockerfile with healthcheck
• ✅ docker-compose with correct DB service
• ✅ Automated OpenAPI (Swagger) — Zero-JSDoc documentation via Zod schemas

Repository Structure

create-express-forge/
├── packages/
│   ├── create-express-forge/   ← The published CLI
│   ├── mcp/                    ← @create-express-forge/mcp Server
│   ├── typescript-config/      ← Shared internal TS config
│   └── lint-config/            ← Shared internal Biome/Lint config
├── examples/
│   └── modular-postgres-prisma/ ← Pre-generated example
└── .github/workflows/           ← CI + Release

🤖 AI & MCP Integration

Create Express Forge is designed to be AI-friendly. We provide a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets you chat with your AI assistant about the project, fetch documentation, and generate scaffolding commands.

Using the MCP Server

You can run the MCP server directly via npx (recommended) or by building the source.

Option 1: Using npx (Recommended) Add this to your Claude Desktop config or other MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "create-express-forge": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@create-express-forge/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Option 2: From Source

1. Build the project: pnpm build
2. Add to your MCP Client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "create-express-forge": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/express-cli/packages/mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

LLM Documentation

We also provide machine-readable documentation files for LLMs:

• llms.txt: Project summary
• llms-full.txt: Full documentation context
• ai.json: Capability manifest and CLI flags

Legacy Support (v3.x)

Documentation for the legacy v3.x (LTS) version is available at https://code-y02.github.io/express-cli/v3/.

To scaffold a project using v3.x, run:

npx create-express-forge@3.3.2 [project-name]

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Versioning & Branches

Branch	npm tag	Description
main	latest	Stable releases
next	next	Pre-releases / beta

License

MIT © Yatharth Lakhate