Angular CLI Error: The serve command requires to be run in an Angular project, but a project definition could not be found

make sure that you are running the command in the application root folder..

if you have downloaded a project,do in the project

npm install

Finally, the command below fixed the issue for me!

ng update --all --force

Angular Cli Error: The serve command requires to be run in an Angular project, but a project definition could not be found

Problem was missing angular.json files.

    ng update --all --force

Tested in Angular 7+

It was silly me but need to leave comment maybe I save someone else some hassle. Same message happens if you multitask and have multiple projects so some of project is nested inside project folder like projectFolder/subProject/projectOne so I was in projectFolder/subProject trying to run command ng serve.

Make sure you are in correct folder because same error will occur if you are in wrong folder and conf and build is missing!

It was happening in my existing project as I tried to update to latest node and npm packages:

1. Uninstall global: npm uninstall -g angular-cli
2. Reset Cache: npm cache clean or npm cache verify (for npm version > 5)
3. Install latest: npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

Make sure you have set the new angular version configuration in your project. The new angular cli uses angular.json and not .angular-cli.json for its configuration.

Follow migration guide.

In your Package Manager Console run the command

PM> cd NameofApp 

then you can try to run the command there.For instance

PM > ng generate component Home

This happens when you try to run the Angular command "ng s" or "ng serve" on the other folder instead of the root folder of the Angular application.

Also upgrade the Angular using the following command:

ng update @angular/cli --migrate-only --from=1.7.4

This will sort it out.

This error may be occur when we are in wrong directory.so use cd command to change your directory. It's not very evident from the above comment that which specific command is giving this error so this answer is based on assumption that you are running ng serve outside the root folder/actual project folder. That's why it's giving error because cli commands require conf & build files to run the cli build.

These should be the steps:
npm install -g @angular/cli  //corrected from 'angular-cli'
ng new projectname
cd projectname
ng serve
open http://localhost:4200

to reinstall back freshly the application is way better rather than update or editing some config that is not recognize by npm due to missing config or we are not really sure what is wrong.

I choose @Tinu solution is work

Step 1) npm install -g @angular/cli

Step 2) ng new my-angular-project

Step 3) cd my-angular-project

Step 4) ng serve --open

just made backup for our current source code and put it back to new angular project that be created.

Change to your app folder, and run generate command again:

This error usually can be traced back to an update to our global or local CLI runtime. To check if this is the problem, we need to review the package.json file. There, we should look for the @angular/cli dependency. This should indicate the CLI version that was used to create our project. Lets make a note of this value, as we need to use it to migrate our project later on.

We should now compare to the current CLI runtime by entering the following command on the terminal window.

ng v

If you get error An unhandled exception occurred: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '~/your-app/node_modules', then you forgot to run npm install

The console should display the current CLI version. If the versions are different, we need to migrate the project to the new CLI version by running the command below. Note that the from version parameter should set to the value found for the @angular/cli setting.

ng update @angular/cli --migrate-only --from=1.6.7

We should now take a look at our project and should notice changes to the CLI dependency version in the package.json file. Also depending on your CLI version, the .angular-cli.json file is deleted, and a new angular.json file is created. This is the project file that the new CLI is looking for and thus the source of the error of no project found. By adding this file, we should be able to be back on track on run our project again.

We should be able to enter the following command and the project should be loading fine.

ng server

Thanks to ozkary

I had the same issue with Angular7 because we need to go the root folder before run your application. Go to the root folder of your app and run the command. It works perfectly for me.

The same problem I came across, but I solved by following these steps of code.

Step 1) npm install -g @angular/cli
Step 2) ng new my-angular-project
Step 3) cd my-angular-project
Step 4) ng serve --open

This error occurs when the project you are running is not an angular project. Though you have downloaded an angular project but have not installed all the dependencies thats why the ng serve command is not available to you.

Just navigate to the path where the project is stored and use the command

npm install

(Note - Node.js should be installed in your system and if you are using Angular 2 or above angular cli should also be installed in your system before you run this command. To check if the node.js is installed n your system 1) Open cmd (any path- as node should be globally installed in your system) 2) use command

node -v
npm -v

to get node and npm version)

One more important thing: The angular cli version won't make a difference if the version installed in your system is higher than the version required by the project. It will give a warning but you can ignore the warning.

Tried all the above But for me it was solved by

npm start

Make sure you have created angular App using below command, then running ng serve in created Project folder.

ng new Project_Name

This project doesn't use the angular cli, it uses webpack directly. To start run the command

npm start

I came across the same error. The reason is that new angular cli update makes angular-cli.json redundant, and it is replaced with angular.json instead. My previous Angular Cli version is 1.7.4, so to make the change, I ran the following command, it will make the conversion for you:

ng update @angular/cli --migrate-only --from=1.7.4

I faced the same issue when,

I had created new angular project using old angular-cli version (1.4.7) I then updated angular-cli using below commands (DO NOT DO THE BELOW TO UPDATE CLI)

• npm uninstall -g @angular/cli
• npm cache clean --force
• npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

Now when I tried ng serve, i was getting same error like you

Angular Cli Error: The serve command requires to be run in an Angular project, but a project definition could not be found

DO BELOW TO UPDATE CLI

ng update @angular/cli --migrate-only --from=1.4.7

In my case, I forgot to change my directory, so just after running the command :

ng new AngularProject

execute another command :

cd AngularProject

and ng serve worked for me.

As Usman said, i had a lot of trouble first time, I was following a tutorial. I had not set my directory to the project directory hence got this error.

I solved the issue by

1. Setting the correct root directory to where my project was cd myproject
2. Compile the app - ng serve

That was it.

This happens because we are hitting ng serve command in some other path.This can be solved by hitting ng serve or npm start command on the path where exactly the our project resides(take path until the folder which contains src,node_modules,etc.)

F:\project\AngularDemo\AngularDemoapp> ng serve

I would suggest to confirm if you are in the directory of the project.

I am using ionciv1, in the file ionic.config.json delete the angular type key and it worked correctly

example:

  {
  "name": "nombre",
  "integrations": {
    "cordova": {}
  },
  "type": "angular", // delete
  "gulpStartupTasks": [
    "sass",
    "templatecache",
    "ng_annotate",
    "useref",
    "watch"
  ],
  "watchPatterns": [
    "www/**/*",
    "!www/lib/**/*"
  ],
  "browsers": [
    {
      "platform": "android",
      "browser": "crosswalk",
      "version": "12.41.296.5"
    }
  ],
  "id": "0.1"
}

solved

     {
      "name": "nombre",
      "integrations": {
        "cordova": {}
      },
      "gulpStartupTasks": [
        "sass",
        "templatecache",
        "ng_annotate",
        "useref",
        "watch"
      ],
      "watchPatterns": [
        "www/**/*",
        "!www/lib/**/*"
      ],
      "browsers": [
        {
          "platform": "android",
          "browser": "crosswalk",
          "version": "12.41.296.5"
        }
      ],
      "id": "0.1"
    }

Any issue in your angular.jason file can cause this error. So if the file is missing in your directory or it has an error that can happen.

It happened to me that I was trying to execute the ng serve command in a project created with Ruby on Rails. In other words, I had to run the rails -s command for Ruby on Rails. I got confused because Angular was built into Ruby on Rails so I had to run the rails -s command to start my project's local server and it worked without a problem.

I had started off with a theme sample project base. It's angular.json

 "projects": {
    "<project name>": {
      "projectType": "application",
      "schematics": {
        "@schematics/angular:component": {
    ...

It also has

 "defaultProject": "<project name>",
  "cli": {
    "analytics": false
  }

Matching the project name with this solved my problem on Angular 13.