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Miniapp Development Guide

Understand the Nebula miniapp development model, runtime, components, APIs, debugging, and release flow.

Nebula miniapps provide a simple, efficient development model, along with components, APIs, host runtime, and cloud distribution, to help developers build miniapps with a native experience.

This chapter introduces the core topics of miniapp development, including project creation, runtime, host environment, directory structure, configuration, components, APIs, compatibility, and version release, to help you build a complete mental model quickly.

If you are new to Nebula, start with the shortest path:

npx nebula create miniapp hello-nebula
cd hello-nebula
npm install
npx nebula miniapp dev

This creates a pure miniapp project. You only need to focus on pages, state, and API calls, without maintaining ios/ or android/ shell projects yourself.

Core concepts

Nebula miniapp development can be understood with these concepts:

  • Miniapp: the project that contains business pages, state, and interaction logic.
  • Host: the host app that runs miniapps and provides native capabilities, container, and lifecycle.
  • Dev Runner: a shared development host that helps you run and debug miniapps independently.
  • Nebula Cloud: the cloud service for version management, distribution, installation, and updates.

It is important to note that Dev Runner is the default development path, but it is still a development Host. It is better for mocked Host APIs and default development behavior, not for real business implementations.

Development workflow

Nebula recommends this miniapp workflow:

  • use npx nebula create miniapp to create a pure miniapp project
  • use npx nebula miniapp dev to start development
  • develop and debug pages inside Dev Runner
  • integrate into a real Host when you need real integration validation

Common commands:

# create a miniapp
npx nebula create miniapp hello-nebula

# start development
npx nebula miniapp dev

# build production output
npx nebula miniapp build

# upload to Nebula Cloud
npx nebula miniapp upload --version 1.0.0

You will typically use these packages:

  • @nebula-rn/client For calling miniapp base APIs and Host APIs.
  • @nebula-rn/components For using cross-platform UI components provided by Nebula.
  • @nebula-rn/sdk For page lifecycle, runtime, and host-related capabilities.

Continue reading

If you want to dive deeper into the framework, components, APIs, host environment, or version distribution, continue with these docs:

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Core conceptsDevelopment workflowRecommended dependenciesContinue readingRelated references