diff --git a/build.sh b/build.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..c2914ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/build.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env -S bash
+
+DEFINES=""
+MODE="release"
+
+while getopts "d" flag; do
+    case "$flag" in
+        d) DEFINES="$DEFINES -DDEBUG"; MODE="debug" ;;
+    esac
+done
+
+echo building neopb as "$MODE"...
+g++ -o npb $DEFINES neopb.cpp tokenizer.cpp