So I've already written an extensive BackboneJS application, but that was ~1.5 years ago and I've just forgotten it all by now. I also didn't use CoffeeScript back then, so this is an opportunity for me to put together an example using the pair.
Finally, I want to pursue using Grape for APIs so that's going in here as well.
Install coffee-script:
npm install -g coffee-script
That obv. assumes you already have node installed.
Next, tell it to watch the coffee files in coffee/lib and compile them in public/javascript:
coffee -o public/javascript -cw coffee/lib