Development setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 24 and npm.
• Git.
• A MySQL AzerothCore world database to connect to. The integration and end-to-end tests need one too.
• Build tools for native modules, used when better-sqlite3 has no prebuilt binary for your platform: Visual Studio Build Tools on Windows, Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS, build-essential and Python on Linux.

Get it running

git clone https://github.com/DMCK96/acore-quest-creator.git
cd acore-quest-creator
npm ci
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in your world database
npm run dev

npm run dev starts the app with hot reload. With a filled-in .env, the login screen is ready and you only choose Connect. See Environment variables.

Native module rebuilds

The app’s project store uses better-sqlite3, a native module that must be built for whichever runtime loads it:

• npm test rebuilds it for Node (Vitest runs in Node).
• npm run dev, npm run build and npm run dist rebuild it for Electron.

Each script rebuilds before it runs, so switching between them just works, but it takes a few seconds. If you run tools directly (for example npx vitest or npx playwright test), run npm run rebuild:node or npm run rebuild:electron first.

Useful scripts

Script	What it does
npm run dev	Run the app from source with hot reload.
npm run build	Build the app into out/.
npm run dist	Build installers for your platform into dist/.
npm run typecheck	Type-check the main and renderer code.
npm test	Unit tests.
npm run test:int	Integration tests against a real world database.
npm run test:e2e	End-to-end tests that drive the built app.
npm run docs:dev	Run this docs site locally.
npm run docs:screenshots	Regenerate the docs screenshots.