Prerequisites

Required tools

SiteKnock is a container-first kit, so your machine needs a modern Node toolchain and a Docker runtime.

Enable pnpm with Corepack

pnpm ships with Node via Corepack. Enable it once:

corepack enable
corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate

A SiteKnock license

Scaffolding a project downloads your licensed bundle from the SiteKnock registry. You'll need:

• A license token bound to your account or organization.
• Network access to the SiteKnock package registry (configured automatically by sk-cli create).

You can verify a license at any time:

sk-cli verify --token <your-token>

See Licensing & Upgrades for how licenses, versions, and entitlements work.

Recommended

• A code editor with AI agent support (VS Code + Copilot, Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, etc.). SiteKnock ships a two-tier knowledge base so your agent understands the kit and your project. See Knowledge Base Dump.
• A Stripe account if you plan to enable billing.
• An email provider account (Resend, Mailgun, or SES) for production email. Local development uses Mailpit automatically.

Local dev services

You don't need to install databases or mail servers yourself. pnpm compose:dev:up starts a shared Docker stack that provides:

This is one machine-wide stack — multiple SiteKnock projects can share it safely.

Next steps