Install Tovu
Tovu isn't distributed as a package yet. This is the real, current way to get it running — clone the repository and run it from source.
Where Tovu is right now: there is no npm package, no downloadable binary, and no installer. The tovu command you'll see in the Quickstart comes from running this repository's own CLI directly — either with tsx, no build required, or as a real command on your PATH after building and linking it yourself.
Before you start
You need three things installed:
- Node.js 24 or newer — check with
node --version. - git — to clone the repository.
- npm — it ships with Node, no separate install.
That's it. No Docker, no database server, no account. A site Tovu creates for you keeps its own SQLite database inside its own folder.
Clone the repository
Tovu's source is public on GitHub — no invite or access request needed:
Install dependencies
This is a large workspace, so the first install can take a few minutes.
Create and run a site, without building anything
The fastest way to get to a running site is to invoke the CLI's source directly through tsx (already installed by step 2):
The second command prints the addresses for your public site and its admin. Open the admin one — from here on, the Quickstart's steps apply exactly as written.
Optional: get a real tovu command
If you'd rather type tovu init and tovu serve the way the rest of the docs show them, build the CLI once and link it onto your PATH:
Once it's done, tovu init my-site and tovu serve my-site work from anywhere on your machine, with no npx tsx prefix.
Next
Once tovu serve is running, the Quickstart picks up from the admin screen it just opened.