Installation

Install the Velocity CLI to create and manage Velocity projects.

Requirements

• Go 1.25 or higher - Required for building projects
• Node.js 18+ - Required for frontend asset compilation (Vite)
• Git - Required for project initialization

Install via Homebrew

The recommended way to install Velocity on macOS:

brew tap velocitykode/tap
brew install velocity

Verify Installation

Check that the CLI is installed correctly:

velocity --version

You should see output like:

velocity version 0.4.0

Understanding the CLI Architecture

Velocity uses two CLI tools:

When you run velocity new myapp, it:

1. Scaffolds a new project
2. Installs dependencies
3. Builds the ./vel binary from your project source
4. Starts development servers

Using vel in Projects

After creating a project, use ./vel for development commands:

cd myapp
./vel serve      # Start dev server
./vel migrate    # Run migrations

Shell Function (Recommended)

Run this once to use vel instead of ./vel:

grep -q "vel()" ~/.zshrc || echo 'vel() { [ -x ./vel ] && ./vel "$@" || echo "vel: not found"; }' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

Now you can simply run:

vel serve
vel migrate

Getting Help

View available commands:

velocity --help
./vel --help

Get help for a specific command:

velocity new --help
./vel serve --help

Updating

Update Velocity Installer

brew upgrade velocity

Or use the built-in self-update:

velocity self-update

Rebuild vel

The vel binary is rebuilt automatically when source files change. To manually rebuild:

go build -o vel ./cmd/vel

Uninstalling

Remove Velocity Installer

brew uninstall velocity
brew untap velocitykode/tap

Remove vel

The vel binary is project-local and gitignored. Simply delete your project directory.