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Quick Start

Get a working Skittles project in three commands.

Scaffold a Project​

Run the init command to create a project structure with an example contract:

npx skittles init

This creates the following files:

your-project/
├── contracts/
│   └── Token.ts           # Example ERC20 token contract
├── test/
│   └── Token.test.ts      # Example test using skittles/testing
├── skittles.config.json   # Compiler configuration
├── tsconfig.json          # TypeScript configuration
├── vitest.config.ts       # Test runner configuration
└── hardhat.config.ts      # In memory EVM configuration

It also updates your .gitignore to exclude build/, dist/, and node_modules/.

Write a Contract​

Open contracts/Token.ts to see the generated example:

contracts/Token.ts
import { address, msg } from "skittles";

export class Token {
  public name: string = "MyToken";
  public symbol: string = "MTK";
  public totalSupply: number = 0;
  private balances: Record<address, number> = {};

  constructor(initialSupply: number) {
    this.totalSupply = initialSupply;
    this.balances[msg.sender] = initialSupply;
  }

  public balanceOf(account: address): number {
    return this.balances[account];
  }

  public transfer(to: address, amount: number): boolean {
    const sender: address = msg.sender;
    if (this.balances[sender] < amount) {
      throw new Error("Insufficient balance");
    }
    this.balances[sender] -= amount;
    this.balances[to] += amount;
    return true;
  }
}

Compile​

Run the compiler:

npx skittles compile

Output:

🍬 Skittles

ℹ Found 1 contract file(s)
ℹ Compiling contracts/Token.ts...
✔ Token compiled successfully
✔ Compilation complete
✔ 1 contract(s) compiled successfully

Inspect the Output​

The compiler produces three artifacts for each contract:

cat build/solidity/Token.sol    # Human readable Solidity
cat build/abi/Token.json        # Contract ABI (JSON)
cat build/bytecode/Token.bin    # EVM bytecode (hex)

Here is the generated Solidity for the example above:

build/solidity/Token.sol
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.20;

contract Token {
    string public name = "MyToken";
    string public symbol = "MTK";
    uint256 public totalSupply;
    mapping(address => uint256) internal balances;

    constructor(uint256 initialSupply) {
        totalSupply = initialSupply;
        balances[msg.sender] = initialSupply;
    }

    function balanceOf(address account) public view virtual returns (uint256) {
        return balances[account];
    }

    function transfer(address to, uint256 amount) public virtual returns (bool) {
        address sender = msg.sender;
        require(balances[sender] >= amount, "Insufficient balance");
        balances[sender] -= amount;
        balances[to] += amount;
        return true;
    }
}

Notice what Skittles did automatically:

  • number became uint256, string stayed string, Record<address, number> became mapping(address => uint256)
  • private became internal (Solidity convention for gas efficiency)
  • balanceOf was marked view because it only reads state
  • The if/throw pattern was optimized to require()
  • Memory annotations (memory for strings) were added where needed
  • Functions were marked virtual by default for extensibility

Testing​

Skittles includes built in testing utilities. Install the testing dependencies:

npm install --save-dev ethers hardhat vitest

The skittles init command scaffolds a test file at test/Token.test.ts, a vitest.config.ts, and a hardhat.config.ts. Run your tests with a single command:

npx skittles test

This compiles your contracts and runs the test suite automatically. No separate compile step needed.

See the Testing Guide for a full walkthrough.

Next Steps​