create-spade

SPA Development Environment

A minimal scaffolding tool for building a Single Page Application (SPA) with a clear, fully controllable build pipeline.

This project favors simple, well-understood tools over opaque all‑in‑one frameworks, so you can understand exactly how your project is built and shipped.

Features

• Gulp: Task runner for an explicit, readable build pipeline
• Vue.js: Reactive HTML templating without unnecessary abstractions
• Rollup: Efficient JavaScript bundling with incremental build support
• Less: CSS preprocessing with syntax close to vanilla CSS
• BrowserSync: Development server with live reload

Getting Started

You don't need to npm install this package. Instead, just run:

npm init spade@latest my_project

This command creates a new directory called my_project with the following structure:

• package.json: Preconfigured with all required devDependencies
• gulpfile.js: Predefined build and development tasks
• src/: Starter files for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Vue components

After the initialization:

cd my_project
npm install
npm run dev

Why Gulp?

Unlike many modern build systems, Gulp gives you full control over your build process.

Its API is intentionally small and is based on straightforward file stream manipulation. This means:

• No proprietary configuration DSLs
• No hidden conventions
• No need to memorize framework‑specific magic

What you write is what runs.

Why Vue.js?

Reactive HTML templates are genuinely useful, and Vue.js excels at this role without getting in your way.

• Routing? Use Vue Router
• Single File Components? Fully supported and bundled by Rollup
• State management? Optional, add only what you actually need

Vue works pretty well as a view layer, nothing more, nothing less.

Why Rollup?

Rollup produces clean, efficient bundles and integrates naturally with modern ES modules.

It focuses on JavaScript bundling and does that one job extremely well, which makes it a good match for a Gulp‑driven workflow.

Why BrowserSync?

BrowserSync provides a lightweight development server with quality‑of‑life features:

• Built‑in HTTP server
• Automatic reload on file changes
• Scroll and interaction syncing across multiple devices, which makes it easier to debug on phone browsers

No additional backend is required during development.

Why Less?

Less is designed to be largely compatible with standard CSS syntax, which keeps stylesheets readable and predictable.

Additional benefits:

• Minimal syntactic overhead compared to other preprocessors
• Written in JavaScript, so it runs directly in Node.js
• No extra native processes when used via Gulp

If you know CSS, you already know most of Less.

Philosophy

This scaffold is intentionally not an all‑in‑one framework.

It is meant for developers who:

• Prefer transparent build pipelines
• Want to minimize vendor lock‑ins
• Value long‑term maintainability over trend‑driven tooling

Simple tools, composed carefully.

License

MIT © 2026 Satoshi Soma