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Pre-flight

Do this before the day — ideally the moment you get the pre-flight email, at least a few days out. It takes five minutes and it means nobody's first hour is spent debugging a Node install on a locked-down laptop.

Every team just needs one member who can do this. If that's not going to be you, forward this page to whoever it is.

What you need​

  • Node.js 18 or newer. Check nodejs.org if you're not sure what you have.
  • A terminal. Terminal.app or iTerm on macOS, PowerShell or cmd on Windows.
  • A Cloudflare account. Free is fine — you'll join the event's shared account separately at Sign Up. If you don't have a personal account yet, create one at dash.cloudflare.com/sign-up now so you're not doing it on the day.

You do not need to install anything globally. Everything below runs through npx, which downloads and runs a tool once without installing it permanently.

Verify script​

Paste this exactly as written. It works unchanged in Terminal on macOS/Linux and in PowerShell or cmd on Windows — node and npx are the same command on every platform.

node -v
npx wrangler --version
npx wrangler login
npx wrangler whoami

What each line should show you:

  1. node -v → v18.x.x or higher. If it's lower, or the command isn't found, install Node from nodejs.org and try again.
  2. npx wrangler --version → downloads and prints a Wrangler version. This confirms npx itself works and you have network access to npm.
  3. npx wrangler login → opens a browser tab to authorize Wrangler against your Cloudflare account. Approve it. If a browser doesn't open automatically, copy the URL it prints.
  4. npx wrangler whoami → prints the email address and account(s) you're logged in as. If you see your email here, you're done.

If something doesn't work​

The most common failure is a corporate laptop blocking either the npm registry or the browser pop-up that wrangler login needs. If step 2 or step 3 hangs or errors:

  • Try a personal laptop or phone hotspot instead, if you have one for the day.
  • Ask a host before the day — that's what this page is for. There's a much better fix available with five days' notice than with five minutes before the talk starts.

Done?​

You're ready. Head to Sign Up — either now, or on the day once you've joined the event account.