Trying to run WordPress Studio, failing

At last, I got fed up with my WordPress theme just enough.

> how to write a wordpress theme

Theme Handbook > Tools and Setup

Setting up a local development environment

For developing WordPress themes, you need to set up a development environment that is suited to WordPress. This list is not exhaustive, but here are several options to choose from:

• @wordpress/env (local WordPress environment package)
• Docker
• WordPress Studio
• Local
• MAMP
• XAMPP
• Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV)

For more information, read the Setting Up a Development Environment documentation in the Core Handbook.

> wordpress studio linux

Daniel Kossmann — How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux, first result.

WordPress Studio – Electron desktop app for managing local WordPress sites. Built with React + TypeScript, uses WordPress Playground (PHP WASM) for running sites.

— AGENTS.md

Downloading language packs ... 
Downloading Node.js binary for linux-x64... 
Unsupported platform: linux 

An unhandled rejection has occurred inside Forge: 
Error: Command failed: npx ts-node /tmp/studio-package-upjlNG/repo/scripts/download-node-binary.ts linux x64 
Unsupported platform: linux 
at genericNodeError (node:internal/errors:985:15) 
   at wrappedFn (node:internal/errors:539:14) 
   at ChildProcess.exithandler (node:child_process:417:12) 
   at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:508:28) 
   at ChildProcess.emit (node:domain:489:12) 
   at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1101:16) 
   at ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:305:5) 
npm error Lifecycle script `package` failed with error: 
npm error code 1 
npm error path /tmp/studio-package-upjlNG/repo/apps/studio 
npm error workspace studio-app@1.7.6-beta2 
npm error location /tmp/studio-package-upjlNG/repo/apps/studio 
npm error command failed 
npm error command sh -c electron-vite build --config ./electron.vite.config.ts --outDir=dist && electron-forge package .

Turns out you need to add «linux: ‘linux’,» to the const platformMap in scripts/download-node-binary.ts. Those vibecoders didn’t bother to.

It’s going to take at least 5.1GB of space in your /tmp. Prepare the means to kill it, because it will not let itself be interrupted or fail gracefully in case it runs out.

The out directory Daniel mentions seems to have been moved into ./apps/studio, so you need to run ./apps/studio/out/Studio-linux-x64/studio

Skip logging in to WordPress.com. Trying to “Add my site” asks me to log in to WordPress.com. I guess I could make a backup and load it, but I choose to create a new site. An error is thrown.

[2026-03-12T19:24:58.539Z][erro][main] Error occurred in handler for 'createSite': CliCommandError: [Last error message] Studio config file not found. Please run the Studio app first.
  [Base message] Failed to create site
  [stderr] Error reading appdata LoggerError: Studio config file not found. Please run the Studio app first.

The codebase is clearly not very platform-agnostic. Or became more requiring of the installation script having been ran. Find the “Studio config file not found” in apps/cli/lib/appdata.ts and replace it with return { sites: [], snapshots: [], };

You can also await saveAppData({ sites: [], snapshots: [], }); before you return. I did that and I’m not sure if first appdata write will occur correctly without that.

“Cannot set up WordPress. Bundled WordPress files not found. Please connect to the internet or reinstall Studio.”

The ~/.config/Studio/server-files corresponds to the wp-files directory in the repo after build. But I don’t think I’m going to reverse engineer apps/studio/bin/studio-cli.sh, and apps/studio/bin/install-studio-cli.sh used by apps/studio/src/modules/cli/lib/macos-installation-manager.ts, any longer. WordPress Studio is not the way.