Getting Started

Get Quill installed and running on your machine in under a minute.

Installation

Option 1: npm (recommended)

npm install -g @tradebuddyhq/quill

This works on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Requires Node.js 16+.

Option 2: VS Code Extension

Search "Quill by TradeBuddy" in VS Code extensions, install it, open any .quill file, and press Cmd+Shift+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows/Linux) to run.

Option 3: Try in your browser

No install needed, use the online playground to write and run Quill code instantly.

Verify installation

quill --version

Interactive Tutorial

New to programming? Start the built-in interactive tutorial:

quill learn

It walks you through 10 hands-on lessons, variables, functions, loops, and more, right in your terminal. Type code, get instant feedback, and learn by doing.

Your first program

Create a file called hello.quill:

say "Hello, World!"

Run it:

quill run hello.quill

You should see:

Hello, World!

Congratulations! You just ran your first Quill program.

A real program

Let's write something more interesting. Create greet.quill:

-- A greeting program
name is "Quill"
version is 1

say "Welcome to {name} version {version}!"

languages are ["Python", "JavaScript", "Quill"]

for each lang in languages:
  if lang is "Quill":
    say "{lang} is the best!"
  otherwise:
    say "{lang} is pretty good too"

Run it:

quill run greet.quill
Welcome to Quill version 1!
Python is pretty good too
JavaScript is pretty good too
Quill is the best!

Building to JavaScript

Quill compiles your .quill files to JavaScript. This is how you go from development to production.

Compile a file

# Compile hello.quill → hello.js
quill build hello.quill

This creates a hello.js file in the same directory. You can then run it with Node.js:

node hello.js

How it works

Quill is a compiled language. Your Quill source code is transformed into JavaScript, which runs anywhere JS runs — Node.js, browsers, Cloudflare Workers, etc.

-- greet.quill (your source code)
to greet name:
  say "Hello, {name}!"

greet("World")
// greet.js (compiled output)
function greet(name) {
  console.log(`Hello, ${name}!`);
}

greet("World");

Development vs Production

Command What it does When to use
quill run file.quill Compiles and runs immediately Development & testing
quill build file.quill Compiles to .js file Production deployment
quill check file.quill Checks for errors without running Before committing code

Deploying your app

Once compiled, your .js file runs on any platform with Node.js:

# Build your Quill app
quill build server.quill

# Run with Node.js
node server.js

# Or use pm2 to keep it running
pm2 start server.js --name my-app

Discord bots: quill build bot.quill → node bot.js on any VPS

Web servers: quill build server.quill → node server.js behind nginx

Cloudflare Workers: quill build worker.quill → npx wrangler deploy

Generate a Dockerfile

# Auto-generate a Dockerfile for your app
quill deploy

This creates a production-ready Dockerfile. Build and run with:

docker build -t my-app .
docker run -d --env-file .env my-app

Next steps