Before you begin
What you need to know before getting started
AudioGuideKit is designed to be approachable for non-developers while remaining flexible enough for technical users who want to customize everything. Here's what you'll need to get started.
What you'll need
Required
Audio content
MP3 or M4A audio files for your tour stops. These need to be hosted somewhere accessible via URL (we'll cover options in the Media section).
Images
Photos for each tour stop. You can use free sources like Unsplash, or host your own.
A computer
Mac, Windows, or Linux—anything that can run Node.js.
A place to host
A static hosting service like Vercel (free), Netlify, or GitHub Pages.
Nice to have
- Basic command line familiarity - You'll run a few terminal commands, but we'll walk you through each one
- A code editor - VS Code is free and works great, but any text editor will do
- Audio recording equipment - Or just your phone! Modern smartphones record surprisingly good audio
Technical requirements
AudioGuideKit uses:
- Node.js 18+ or Bun (recommended) for running the development server
- Git for cloning the repository
Don't have these installed? No problem. The Installation guide walks through setting everything up.
How tours are structured
Every AudioGuideKit tour consists of:
- A metadata file (
metadata.json) containing settings like the theme and offline mode - Language files (like
en.json,es.json) containing the actual tour content
Here's a simplified view:
src/data/tour/
├── metadata.json # Settings (theme, offline mode)
├── en.json # English tour content
├── de.json # German tour content (optional)
└── fr.json # French tour content (optional)
Each language file contains the tour title, description, and an array of "stops"—each stop being an audio segment with its title, image, and audio file URL.
You can start with just one language file. Add more languages later when you're ready.