NestJS Boilerplate CLI

An opinionated NestJS backend generator: think “T3 Stack energy”, but for production-grade NestJS APIs.

Generated stack

• NestJS with strict TypeScript
• ORM selection: TypeORM, Prisma, or Drizzle
• PostgreSQL connection by default
• Better Auth for auth/session management
• Liquibase as the migration source of truth
• Class-validator for DTOs and environment validation
• Scalar API reference instead of Swagger UI
• Oxlint and Oxfmt instead of ESLint and Prettier
• Production defaults: Helmet, compression, throttling, structured logging, health checks

Usage

npm create nestjs-backend my-api -- --orm prisma

Or run the package directly:

npx create-nestjs-backend my-api --orm prisma

Local development:

npm install
npm run build
node dist/index.js my-api --orm drizzle --package-manager pnpm

CLI options

• --orm typeorm|prisma|drizzle
• --package-manager pnpm|npm|yarn
• --agents-md to generate a root AGENTS.md for AI coding assistants (Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, etc.)
• --no-agents-md to skip AGENTS.md when scaffolding interactively
• --force to write into a non-empty directory

Example with agent instructions:

npx create-nestjs-backend my-api --orm prisma --package-manager pnpm --agents-md

Generated dependency versions

Generated projects use caret-pinned versions curated in src/templates/dependency-versions.ts. Bump that manifest intentionally when upgrading the scaffold stack.

Publish safety

Before publishing, the package runs prepublishOnly, which builds the CLI, runs the integration tests, and checks the npm tarball contents.

Recommended release flow:

npm run build
npm test
npm pack --dry-run
npm publish

For stronger supply-chain verification, publish from CI with npm 2FA enabled and use npm provenance/trusted publishing where possible.

Philosophy

Liquibase owns schema migrations. ORM entities/schemas are application mapping layers and must stay aligned with Liquibase changelogs. Generated projects ship liquibase.sample.properties; copy it to liquibase.properties for local migration config (same pattern as .env.example → .env).