prisma init

Bootstraps a fresh Prisma ORM project in the current directory.

Command

prisma init [options]

Bun Runtime

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

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

prisma init

Creates a PostgreSQL project setup.

SQLite project

prisma init --datasource-provider sqlite

MySQL with custom URL

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

Prisma Postgres (cloud)

prisma init --db

Opens browser for authentication, creates cloud database instance.

AI-generated schema

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

Generates schema based on description and deploys to Prisma Postgres.

With preview features

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

Generated Schema (v7)

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

datasource db {
  provider = "postgresql"
}

Generated Config (v7)

// 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

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