Prerequisites

You need accounts at four services and a working local toolchain. Most of them have free tiers that cover this.

Sign up at dash.cloudflare.com. Verify your email. The free Workers plan covers everything HowlCast does — D1, R2, KV, two Workers, and the cron triggers all sit under free quotas for a single broadcaster.

GetStream

Sign up at getstream.io. You need both Chat and Video products on the same app. Free tier covers small audiences; pricing kicks in at scale. Note the API Key and API Secret — you'll paste these into Wrangler secrets.

Resend (optional but recommended)

Sign up at resend.com and verify your sending domain (SPF / DKIM / DMARC records). Without Resend the magic-link emails fall through to console output in dev and silently fail in prod.

Twitch developer app

Go to dev.twitch.tv/console/apps/create. Create a confidential app named HowlCast. Use any placeholder OAuth redirect URL — HowlCast uses client_credentials grant, so the redirect URL is never hit. Copy the Client ID and generate a Client Secret.

Twitch is required for two things: emote pipeline (7TV / BTTV / FFZ / Twitch lookups by Twitch user ID) and the first-run setup wizard's channel lookup.

CLI tools

Bun 1.3+

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

Verify with bun --version. The repo's packageManager field pins this.

Wrangler (via Bun)

bunx wrangler login

Authorizes Wrangler against your Cloudflare account. Re-running this is safe.

Git + GitHub

A GitHub account, the gh CLI, and SSH keys configured if you plan to deploy via GitHub Actions.

Optional but useful

Discord with two webhooks (public + private channels) for the go-live / stream-end fanout
OBS Studio 30+ to push RTMPS to GetStream
1Password (or another secrets manager) to keep API tokens organized — HowlCast uses ~15 distinct secrets

Once you have the accounts and CLI in place, head to Quickstart.

Accounts

Cloudflare