One-off Javascript project set-up

Most of my Javascript projects start with SvelteKit: pnpm create svelte@latest project_name. When they don’t, it’s usually a one-off script or scraping task. Here’s some minimal set-up that makes life easier.

mkdir project_name && cd project_name && pnpm init

Add "type": "module" to package.json.

For typechecking, add a jsconfig.json with:

{
	"compilerOptions": {
		"allowJs": true,
		"checkJs": true,
		"moduleResolution": "node",
		"module": "esnext",
		"target": "esnext",
		"strict": true,
		"esModuleInterop": true,
		"skipLibCheck": true,
		"forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
		"resolveJsonModule": true
	},
	"exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

Tell VSCode to format on save by adding a .vscode/settings.json with:

{
	"editor.formatOnSave": true,
	"editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
}

Assuming you have Prettier installed globally, add a .prettierrc to configure formatting with:

{
	"useTabs": true,
	"singleQuote": true,
	"trailingComma": "none"
}

What else? Playwright and SQLite, more often than not:

pnpm add @playwright/test better-sqlite3

In a larger project I would use Vitest for unit tests, but Playwright is good enough for a few in a *.test.js or *.spec.js file. Its default config usually suffices without creating a playwright.config.ts.