What Is Vite+?

What it is#

Vite+ is a unified toolchain and single entry point for web development. Instead of learning a different tool for each job, you learn one command: vp. Under the hood it combines tools you may already know:

It ships in two parts:

• vp — the global command-line tool you install once on your machine.
• vite-plus — a local package installed into each project (it carries the actual Vite, Vitest, and friends).

Why you'd care#

One tool means one thing to learn, one place for config (vite.config.ts), and one upgrade story. You stop wiring five tools together and stop arguing about which lint config goes where. It's also friendlier to AI coding agents, because there's a single predictable command surface.

Before#

A typical project today: package.json scripts calling vite, vitest, eslint, prettier; a .nvmrc for Node; a lockfile for one specific package manager; separate config files for each tool. Nothing is wrong — it's just a lot of moving parts.

npm run dev      # vite
npm run test     # vitest
npm run lint     # eslint
npm run format   # prettier

After#

The same jobs, one CLI:

vp dev     # dev server
vp test    # tests
vp check   # format + lint + type-check, together
vp build   # production build

Do it yourself#

No install yet — that's the next lesson. For now, just internalize the split:

vp  (global CLI)                     ← you type commands here
 │
 ├─ reads ──────────► vite.config.ts (one config for everything)
 │
 └─ delegates to ───► vite-plus (local package, ships in your repo)
                        ├─ Vite / Rolldown   (dev + build)
                        ├─ Vitest            (test)
                        ├─ Oxlint / Oxfmt    (lint + format)
                        ├─ tsdown            (pack)
                        └─ Vite Task         (run + cache)

The global vp is the steering wheel; the local vite-plus is the engine that ships in your repo.

Gotchas#

• Vite+ is not the same as Vite. Vite is one of the tools inside it. vp dev and vp build invoke Vite; the rest is extra.
• vp commands are built-in and fixed — vp build always runs the Vite+ builder, never a package.json script named build. (We'll cover how to run your own scripts in the Intermediate series.)
• It's beta: expect the surface to grow. The global vp isn't an npm package you pin — it's a curl-installed binary with its own version. The local vite-plus package is versioned normally, but in beta you generally track the toolchain (vp --version) rather than hand-pinning.

Recap#

Vite+ = one CLI (vp, global) + one package (vite-plus, local) that together wrap Vite, Vitest, Oxlint, Oxfmt, tsdown, and a task runner. Next: install vp and scaffold a real project.