Overview

This package includes the global command for Create Decent App.

After completing the install, you will get a working web app with UI to pleasantly handle local LLM access in development and production.

Features:

• Static-content, single-page web app with Vite-built bundles.
• Typescript/React codebase.
• Jest-based test runner for unit tests.
• Use local LLMs via WebLLM (post-deployment) or Ollama (during development)
• Common look and feel via widgets and design system.
• Progressive web app (PWA) support. (Users can install fully-offline versions of your web app.)

The code created by create-decent-app follows the spirit (if not the letter) of Local-First software development. There is a basic persistent-storage key/value utility module included to help you store user data without calling services. To give users of your web app the privacy benefits of using a local LLM, think about local-first.

I've taken some pains to keep the project low-dependency, avoiding 3rd-party packages in favor of easily-writable code, and in-lining (vendoring) code from my own packages into the template. There's an article I wrote about this sensibility called "Write More, Reuse Less".

Usage

npx create-decent-app YOUR-PROJECT-NAME

Some options will be presented and you can pick what you like. Then create-decent-app will make your new project. The installer will create a new subdirectory for your project.

Checking the Install Script

npx literally just downloads a package and executes whatever is in it on your personal device. I promise I put nothing malicious or unsafe into create-decent-app, but why should you trust me?

Here are some ways to protect yourself from me (and worse people) providing NPX-ecutables:

• Read through the install script at the Create Decent App git repo before running the npx command. I wrote the script to be free of any dependencies other than Node.js built-in packages, and to have all the code that executes be easy to understand. You can spend 5 minutes checking, and you'll see I'm not doing anything sneaky.
• OR... you could manually clone the template yourself and rename it to match your project. The template is right over here. No execution of scripts via npx need happen if you decide to clone the template yourself.
• OR... you could run npx inside of Docker or some other virtualization.

Deploying to DecentApps.net

There is an option in the install script to "Include a Github deploy script for decentapps.net?" If you say "yes", an action will run when you git push to a Github repo. Without configuration of some parameters, the script will benignly fail and not do anything at all.

I might do a PaaS-style portal with this website later. You probably just want to choose the default "No", for now. If you say "Yes", it's harmless, but potentially annoying.

Licensing

My code and other files in this repository are licensed under the MIT open source license.

The template is in a separate repository and has its own licensing, also MIT.

Contributing

The project isn't open to contributions at this point. But that could change. Contact me if you'd like to collaborate.

Contacting

You can reach me via my LinkedIn profile. I'll accept connections if you will just mention "decent apps" or some other shared interest in your connection request.