Installation

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following:

• Node.js v22 or later — download

Quick start

The fastest way to start a new Stratal project is with create-stratal:

npm

npm create stratal@latest my-app

yarn

yarn create stratal my-app

pnpm

pnpm create stratal my-app

The CLI will prompt you to pick a template and package manager, then scaffold the project and install all dependencies.

To skip the interactive picker, pass the --template flag directly:

npm create stratal@latest my-app --template hello-world

The generated project (hello-world template) looks like this:

my-app/
├── src/
│   ├── app.module.ts
│   ├── hello.controller.ts
│   └── index.ts
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── wrangler.jsonc

Start the dev server:

cd my-app
npm run dev

Head to Your First Worker for a walkthrough of the generated code.

AI-powered development

Stratal provides AI skills that teach your AI agent the framework’s conventions, patterns, and APIs. With the skill installed, your AI agent can scaffold new projects, generate controllers, services, and modules, and wire dependency injection — all following Stratal best practices.

Install the Stratal skill

npx skills add strataljs/stratal

This installs the Stratal skill into your project’s .agents/ directory. Your AI agent automatically discovers and uses the skill when working with Stratal code.

Tip

Commit the .agents/ directory to your repository so all team members benefit from AI-assisted Stratal development.

MCP server

Stratal can also expose your API routes as Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, letting AI agents discover and call your endpoints directly. Since Stratal generates an OpenAPI spec from your routes out of the box, the MCP server works with no additional setup.

Preview which routes are available as tools:

npx quarry mcp:tools

Start the MCP server:

npx quarry mcp:serve

See AI Integration for client configuration, filtering options, and remote dispatch.

Add to an existing project

If you already have a project and want to add Stratal to it, follow the steps below.

Install dependencies

Install Stratal:

npm

npm install stratal reflect-metadata

yarn

yarn add stratal reflect-metadata

pnpm

pnpm add stratal reflect-metadata

Then install the dev dependencies:

npm

npm install -D typescript wrangler @cloudflare/workers-types

yarn

yarn add -D typescript wrangler @cloudflare/workers-types

pnpm

pnpm add -D typescript wrangler @cloudflare/workers-types

TypeScript configuration

Create a tsconfig.json in the project root. Stratal uses TypeScript decorators, so both experimentalDecorators and emitDecoratorMetadata must be enabled:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "esnext",
    "module": "esnext",
    "moduleResolution": "bundler",
    "strict": true,
    "skipLibCheck": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
    "resolveJsonModule": true,
    "isolatedModules": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
    "outDir": "./dist",
    "rootDir": "./src",
    "types": ["@cloudflare/workers-types/2023-07-01"]
  },
  "include": ["src/**/*"]
}

Wrangler configuration

Create a wrangler.jsonc file to configure how Cloudflare deploys your worker:

{
  "name": "my-worker",
  "main": "src/index.ts",
  "compatibility_date": "2026-02-25",
  "compatibility_flags": ["nodejs_compat"],
  "vars": {
    "ENVIRONMENT": "development"
  },
  "kv_namespaces": [
    { "binding": "CACHE", "id": "<your-kv-namespace-id>" }
  ]
}

Key settings:

• main — points to your worker entry file.
• nodejs_compat — required so Stratal can use Node.js APIs.
• ENVIRONMENT — a variable Stratal reads at runtime.
• CACHE — a KV namespace binding used by Stratal’s built-in caching layer. You can create one with npx wrangler kv namespace create CACHE and paste the returned id into the config.

Verify the setup

Add a dev script to your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "wrangler dev"
  }
}

Create the source directory:

mkdir src

Your project should now look like this:

my-worker/
├── src/
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── wrangler.jsonc

Everything is in place. Head to Your First Worker to create the entry point and build your first route.