prisma init

Name: prisma-cli-init
Rating: 72
Author: prisma

Bootstraps a fresh Prisma ORM project in the current directory.

Command

bash

prisma init [options]

Bun Runtime

If you're using Bun, run Prisma with bunx --bun so it doesn't fall back to Node.js:

bash

bunx --bun prisma init

What It Creates

•prisma/schema.prisma - Your Prisma schema file
•prisma.config.ts - TypeScript configuration for Prisma CLI
•.env - Environment variables (DATABASE_URL)
•.gitignore - Ignores node_modules, .env, and generated files

Options

Option	Description	Default
`--datasource-provider`	Database provider: `postgresql`, `mysql`, `sqlite`, `sqlserver`, `mongodb`, `cockroachdb`	`postgresql`
`--db`	Provisions a fully managed Prisma Postgres database on the Prisma Data Platform	-
`--url`	Define a custom datasource url	-
`--generator-provider`	Define the generator provider to use	`prisma-client`
`--output`	Define Prisma Client generator output path to use	-
`--preview-feature`	Define a preview feature to use	-
`--with-model`	Add example model to created schema file	-

Examples

Basic initialization

bash

prisma init

Creates a PostgreSQL project setup.

SQLite project

bash

prisma init --datasource-provider sqlite

MySQL with custom URL

bash

prisma init --datasource-provider mysql --url "mysql://user:password@localhost:3306/mydb"

Prisma Postgres (cloud)

bash

prisma init --db

Opens browser for authentication, creates cloud database instance.

AI-generated schema

bash

prisma init --prompt "Blog with users, posts, comments, and tags"

Generates schema based on description and deploys to Prisma Postgres.

With preview features

bash

prisma init --preview-feature relationJoins --preview-feature fullTextSearch

Generated Schema (v7)

prisma

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client"
  output   = "../generated"
}

datasource db {
  provider = "postgresql"
}

Generated Config (v7)

typescript

// prisma.config.ts
import { defineConfig, env } from 'prisma/config'

export default defineConfig({
  schema: 'prisma/schema.prisma',
  migrations: {
    path: 'prisma/migrations',
  },
  datasource: {
    url: env('DATABASE_URL'),
  },
})

Next Steps After Init

•Configure DATABASE_URL in prisma.config.ts or .env
•Define your models in prisma/schema.prisma
•Run prisma dev for local development or connect to remote DB
•Run prisma migrate dev to create migrations
•Run prisma generate to generate Prisma Client