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Development Setup

Install the Bkper CLI, authenticate via Google OAuth, and verify access to your books. This single setup step unlocks CLI commands, bkper-js scripting, and the full app development toolchain.

Everything you build on Bkper starts with the CLI. It handles authentication, provides the bkper-js library for programmatic access, and manages the full app lifecycle.

Prerequisites

Install and authenticate

  1. Install the CLI

    Terminal window
    npm i -g bkper

  2. Authenticate

    Terminal window
    bkper auth login

    This opens your browser for Google OAuth authentication. Once complete, the CLI stores your credentials locally. All API calls — from the CLI, from scripts, and from bkper-js — use this token. To clean up later, run bkper auth logout, which revokes the stored refresh token when possible and clears local credentials.

  3. Verify

    Terminal window
    bkper book list

    You should see a list of your Bkper Books. If you do, you’re ready to build.

What you now have

After setup, you have:

  • CLI commands — Manage books, accounts, transactions, and apps from the terminal. Run bkper --help for the full command list.

  • Auth provider for scripts — Use getOAuthToken() from the bkper package in any Node.js script:

    import { Bkper } from 'bkper-js';
    import { getOAuthToken } from 'bkper';
    

    Bkper.setConfig({
        oauthTokenProvider: async () => getOAuthToken(),
    });

  • App development tools — Initialize, develop, and deploy platform apps with bkper app commands.

Optional: API key

For dedicated API quota and project-level usage tracking, you can configure your own API key. This is optional — the default shared quota (60 requests per minute) works for most use cases.

See Direct API Usage for setup instructions.

Next steps