Install

One-command install

curl -fsSL https://skillmaker.studio/install.sh | sh

This detects your OS/arch, downloads the matching release tarball from the latest GitHub Release (sociotechnica-org/skillmaker-studio), and installs skillmaker (plus the viewer assets it needs) to ~/.skillmaker/bin. Re-run the same command to upgrade. Supported platforms today: macOS arm64 and Linux x64. macOS x64 (Intel) and Linux arm64 are fast-follows.

Installing from source

Building from a checkout works on any platform bun supports, and is the right path if you want to hack on Skillmaker Studio itself.

Prerequisites

bun — the CLI runs directly under bun, no build step required for local use.
git — Skillmaker Studio’s journal is git-tracked, and every workspace it manages must be a git repo.
If you use asdf to manage bun, note that asdf refuses a bare bun invocation in a directory without a .tool-versions file. If bun --version fails with an asdf resolution error, set:
Terminal window
```
export ASDF_BUN_VERSION=1.3.11
```
(The Skillmaker Studio repo itself carries a .tool-versions file, so this only matters when you run the CLI from outside the repo checkout — which is exactly what the next page does.)

Clone and build

git clone https://github.com/sociotechnica-org/skillmaker-studio.git
cd skillmaker-studio
bun install
bun run build:viewer   # required once before `skillmaker start` works

bun install also clones a research copy of the Effect source (.repos/effect) used for reference; skip it with SKIP_EFFECT_CLONE=1 if you don’t need it.

Running the CLI from the checkout

The CLI’s entry point is packages/cli/src/main.ts, and bun runs TypeScript directly — no compile step:

bun packages/cli/src/main.ts --help

That’s the exact invocation this guide uses everywhere below. In a real shell it’s worth a short alias so the rest of this guide (and the CLI Reference) reads naturally as skillmaker <command>:

alias skillmaker="bun /path/to/skillmaker-studio/packages/cli/src/main.ts"

Optional: compile a single binary

Skillmaker Studio can also compile to one self-contained executable (no bun, no repo checkout, no node_modules needed on the target machine — bun build --compile embeds the runtime):

bun run build:dist
# produces dist/skillmaker (the binary) and dist/viewer-dist/ (must stay
# siblings — see docs/dist.md in the repo for the full artifact story)

Copy both to somewhere on PATH and skillmaker works exactly like the bun packages/cli/src/main.ts invocation above, from any directory.

Next: create your first Skill Bundle

Continue to Your first Skill Bundle — it walks init → new → start in a brand-new directory with real CLI output.