Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or later --- CSP Analyser uses modern Node.js APIs (node:util parseArgs, top-level await in ESM) that require v20+.
• A Chromium-compatible browser is installed automatically by the setup command (see below).

Install

Global install (recommended)

Install once and use csp-analyser from any directory:

npm install -g @makerx/csp-analyser

Local install as a dev dependency

If you prefer to pin the version per-project:

npm install -D @makerx/csp-analyser

Then run via npx:

npx @makerx/csp-analyser crawl https://example.com

Run setup

After installing, run the setup command to download Chromium and any OS-level dependencies Playwright needs:

csp-analyser setup

This calls npx playwright install --with-deps chromium under the hood. It only needs to run once per machine (or after a major Playwright version bump).

TIP

If you already have Playwright browsers installed from another project, setup will detect and reuse them.

Platform-specific notes

Debian / Ubuntu

# setup handles this automatically, but if you need to install
# Playwright dependencies manually:
npx playwright install-deps chromium

Arch Linux

# Install the system dependencies Playwright needs:
sudo pacman -S --needed nss alsa-lib atk at-spi2-core cups \
  libdrm libxcomposite libxdamage libxrandr mesa pango

# Alternatively, install playwright-chromium from the AUR:
# yay -S playwright-chromium

macOS

# No extra dependencies required. setup handles everything.
csp-analyser setup

Windows

# Run from PowerShell or CMD. No extra dependencies required.
csp-analyser setup

Data directory

CSP Analyser stores its SQLite database and session data in a platform-appropriate directory:

Platform	Location
Linux	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/csp-analyser (defaults to ~/.config/csp-analyser)
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/csp-analyser
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\csp-analyser

csp-analyser/
  data.db     # SQLite database (sessions, violations, policies)

The directory is created automatically on first run.

Verify the installation

csp-analyser --version

You should see the installed version number (e.g. 0.1.0). If you installed locally, use npx @makerx/csp-analyser --version.

Next steps

Head to the Quick Start guide to generate your first CSP policy in under five minutes.