Quick Start

Install the Localingos CLI, run localingos init, and sync your first translations in three steps.

Step 1 — Install the CLI

Install the Localingos CLI globally via npm.

npm install -g localingos

Step 2 — Initialize your project

Before running this command: Create a project and an API key on the Get started page — it does both in one place. You will need them during initialization.

Run init in your project root. It will ask for your API key, project ID, source locale, file format, and paths.

localingos init

At the end, the CLI will ask what you want to do next:

Option A: Your project already has a source locale file (e.g. en-US.json)
Choose "Run sync" or skip and run localingos sync yourself. This pushes your source strings and pulls back translations. You are done.

Option B: Your project has hardcoded strings (not yet internationalized)
Choose "Generate an AI prompt". This creates a .localingos-extract-prompt.md file with instructions for an AI coding agent (Cursor, Copilot, etc.) to extract all strings, set up the i18n framework, and create locale files automatically. Then run localingos sync to translate.

Option C: No AI agent available
Follow our Manual i18n Setup Guide for step-by-step instructions with full code examples.

Step 3 — Sync translations

Push your source strings to Localingos and pull back translations for every target locale configured on your project.

localingos sync

Only changed strings are re-translated. Unchanged strings are preserved.

Translation runs asynchronously: the first sync of a new key set reports the keys as pending and writes nothing. Run localingos sync again a few seconds later to collect the translations.