Nostr Getting Started

Connect to relays, create events, and build Nostr clients.

Prerequisites

npm install nostr-tools

Generate Keys

import { generateSecretKey, getPublicKey } from 'nostr-tools';

const sk = generateSecretKey(); // Uint8Array
const pk = getPublicKey(sk);    // hex string

console.log('Public key (npub):', pk);
// Store sk securely!

Connect to Relays

import { Relay } from 'nostr-tools/relay';

const relay = await Relay.connect('wss://relay.damus.io');
console.log('Connected to', relay.url);

Subscribe to Events

const sub = relay.subscribe([
  { kinds: [1], limit: 10 }  // Recent text notes
], {
  onevent(event) {
    console.log('Got event:', event);
  },
  oneose() {
    console.log('End of stored events');
  }
});

// Later: sub.close();

Publish Events

import { finalizeEvent } from 'nostr-tools';

const event = finalizeEvent({
  kind: 1,
  created_at: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000),
  tags: [],
  content: 'Hello, Nostr!'
}, sk);

await relay.publish(event);

Event Kinds

Kind	Purpose
0	Profile metadata
1	Text note
3	Contact list
4	Encrypted DM
7	Reaction

Next Steps

• Nostr Protocol — Full protocol details
• NIP-98 — HTTP authentication
• Noskey — CLI key generation