💻 Installation

Get LinkDen running on your machine in under 5 minutes.

📋 Prerequisites

• Bun 1.3+ -- Grab it from bun.sh.
• Node.js 24 -- bun dev runs Alchemy under Node.
• Cloudflare account -- A free account is enough for development.

1. 📂 Clone and Install

git clone https://github.com/mrdemonwolf/linkden.git
cd linkden
bun install

Tip: bun install handles all apps and packages in the monorepo automatically.

2. ⚙️ Environment Setup

Copy the example file:

cp .env.example .env

Required Variables:

3. 🚀 Start Dev Servers

There are two ways to run LinkDen locally. Both apply the database migrations for you (option B with one command).

A. bun dev (everything, through Alchemy)

bun dev

bun dev runs the Alchemy program in dev mode: it starts the web app, the API and the docs and applies every migration in packages/db/src/migrations to a local D1. Alchemy keeps its state in the alchemy-state worker, so this needs ALCHEMY_STATE_TOKEN in .env (see the Cloudflare guide if you don't have one). In this mode apps/web/.env and apps/server/.env are loaded as well.

B. API and web separately (no Alchemy state needed)

# first run only: apply the migrations to the local D1
cd apps/server && for f in ../../packages/db/src/migrations/*.sql; do bunx wrangler d1 execute linkden-db --local --file="$f" --yes; done; cd ../..

bun dev:server   # wrangler dev on :3000 (reads apps/server/.dev.vars)
bun dev:web      # next dev on :3001

• 🌐 Web App: http://localhost:3001
• ⚙️ API Server: http://localhost:3000
• 📚 Docs: http://localhost:3002 (bun dev:docs)

No db:push. Schema changes go through migrations: edit packages/db/src/schema, run bun db:generate, and the new migration is applied on the next bun dev / bun ship. bun db:reset wipes both local databases.

4. ✅ Verify It Works

1. Visit: http://localhost:3001/admin/setup.
2. Create Account: Enter your name, email, and password.
3. Registration: The first user becomes the admin and registration locks automatically.
4. Dashboard: You'll be redirected to the admin panel. You're all set!

Next Steps

• 🚀 Quick Start -- Add your first links.
• ⚙️ Configuration -- Deep dive into env vars.
• ☁️ Self-Hosting -- Deploy to Cloudflare.