Getting started

The starter is scaffolded with create-saas-starter — a CLI that copies the kitchen-sink reference app, prunes the features you don't pick, verifies the result, and hands you a running project. This section walks the whole path: install the CLI, generate an app, understand the feature picker, run it locally, and tour what you got.

What you'll build

Every generated app is a standalone single-app Next.js project — not a monorepo. It ships the features you selected (plus the always-on core), a Prisma schema, a tRPC server, tests, and a Vercel-first deploy guide, with a git repository initialized on an initial commit.

Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 22 — the reference app's engine requirement (engines.node).
• A package manager — pnpm, npm, bun, or yarn. The generator detects the one that invoked it and defaults to it; generation differs only in which lockfile it keeps and which install command it prints.
• tar on your PATH — the published CLI ships the template as a bundled template.tar.gz and extracts it with the system tar at generate time (ubiquitous on Linux/macOS and Windows 10 1803+).
• Docker (for local dev) — the generated app's docker-compose.yml runs Postgres and any services your selected features need.

Install and run

The CLI is a create-* package, so you don't install it globally — run it directly with your package manager's dlx runner. The generator lives under the generate subcommand:

# npm
npx create-saas-starter generate

# pnpm
pnpm dlx create-saas-starter generate

# bun
bunx create-saas-starter generate

# yarn
yarn dlx create-saas-starter generate

Run with no flags for the interactive flow (project name, package manager, and the feature picker), or pass flags to skip the prompts — see Create an app.

Next in this section

• Create an app — the interactive and non-interactive generate flows.
• The feature picker — the menu, the dependency graph, and how auto-selection works.
• First run — bring up Postgres, migrate, and start the dev server.
• Project tour — what's in the generated app and where to find it.

For the full command reference — every flag, the prune model, add <block>, and the stamp/version policy — see the CLI section.