Tutorial

This tutorial builds Shelf, a reading list: you save links to read later, mark them read, and filter them. Then you add accounts, so every user has a shelf of their own, write tests for it, and ship it as one binary to a server.

Each step adds one idea and ends with an app that runs. Along the way you use most of what a Tern app is made of:

1. Create the app: a new project, and the dev server
2. Your first page: a Go load, and the types it gives your Svelte page
3. A database: SQLite, and migrations
4. Saving links: a form action, validated from Go struct tags
5. A page for each link: a route parameter, not-found pages, more actions
6. Filtering: state in the URL
7. Accounts: sign-up, sign-in, and data that belongs to its user
8. Tests: the whole app, tested from Go
9. Ship it: one binary, deployed over SSH

The finished app is examples/shelf, if you want to compare. It goes one step further than the tutorial: assistants such as Claude can use it, through the tools in assistants.go (Apps for assistants).

#What you need

• Go 1.26 or later, and Node.js 22 or later. Node builds the client in development; the app you ship runs without it.
• Some Go, and some Svelte or another component framework. You don't need to know SvelteKit, but if you do, much of this will look familiar: Coming from SvelteKit lists the differences.