#3. Creating a new Hardhat project

We'll install Hardhat using the Node.js package manager (npm), which is both a package manager and an online repository for JavaScript code.

You can use other package managers with Node.js, but we suggest you use npm 7 or higher to follow this guide. You should already have it if you followed the previous section's steps.

Open a new terminal and run these commands to create a new folder:

mkdir hardhat-tutorial
cd hardhat-tutorial

Then initialize an npm project as shown below. You'll be prompted to answer some questions.

TIP

Use the tabs in the snippets to select your preferred package manager. We recommend using npm 7 or later, since it makes installing Hardhat's dependencies much easier.

npm 7+

npm 6

yarn

npm init

npm init

yarn init

Now we can install Hardhat:

npm 7+

npm 6

yarn

npm install --save-dev hardhat

npm install --save-dev hardhat

yarn add --dev hardhat

In the same directory where you installed Hardhat run:

npx hardhat init

Select Create an empty hardhat.config.js with your keyboard and hit enter.

$ npx hardhat init
888    888                      888 888               888
888    888                      888 888               888
888    888                      888 888               888
8888888888  8888b.  888d888 .d88888 88888b.   8888b.  888888
888    888     "88b 888P"  d88" 888 888 "88b     "88b 888
888    888 .d888888 888    888  888 888  888 .d888888 888
888    888 888  888 888    Y88b 888 888  888 888  888 Y88b.
888    888 "Y888888 888     "Y88888 888  888 "Y888888  "Y888

👷 Welcome to Hardhat v2.19.4 👷‍

? What do you want to do? …
  Create a JavaScript project
  Create a TypeScript project
   Create a TypeScript project (with Viem)
❯ Create an empty hardhat.config.js
  Quit

When Hardhat is run, it searches for the closest hardhat.config.js file starting from the current working directory. This file normally lives in the root of your project and an empty hardhat.config.js is enough for Hardhat to work. The entirety of your setup is contained in this file.

# Hardhat's architecture

Hardhat is designed around the concepts of tasks and plugins. The bulk of Hardhat's functionality comes from plugins, and you're free to choose the ones you want to use.

#Tasks

Every time you're running Hardhat from the command-line, you're running a task. For example, npx hardhat compile is running the compile task. To see the currently available tasks in your project, run npx hardhat. Feel free to explore any task by running npx hardhat help [task].

TIP

You can create your own tasks. Check out the Creating a task guide.

#Plugins

Hardhat is unopinionated in terms of what tools you end up using, but it does come with some built-in defaults. All of which can be overridden. Most of the time the way to use a given tool is by consuming a plugin that integrates it into Hardhat.

In this tutorial we are going to use our recommended plugin, @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox, which has everything you need for developing smart contracts.

To install it, run this in your project directory:

npm 7+

npm 6

yarn

npm install --save-dev @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox

npm install --save-dev @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox @nomicfoundation/hardhat-network-helpers @nomicfoundation/hardhat-chai-matchers @nomicfoundation/hardhat-ethers @nomicfoundation/hardhat-verify chai ethers hardhat-gas-reporter solidity-coverage @typechain/hardhat typechain @typechain/ethers-v6

yarn add --dev @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox @nomicfoundation/hardhat-network-helpers @nomicfoundation/hardhat-chai-matchers @nomicfoundation/hardhat-ethers @nomicfoundation/hardhat-verify chai ethers hardhat-gas-reporter solidity-coverage @typechain/hardhat typechain @typechain/ethers-v6

Add the highlighted line to your hardhat.config.js so that it looks like this:

require("@nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox");

/** @type import('hardhat/config').HardhatUserConfig */
module.exports = {
  solidity: "0.8.23",
};