Create an app

create-saas-starter generate is the command that produces an app. It runs in two modes: an interactive prompt flow, or a fully non-interactive flow driven by flags.

Interactive

Run generate with no flags:

npx create-saas-starter generate

It asks four things, in order:

1. Project name — becomes both the output directory and the generated package.json name. Required; the default placeholder is my-app.
2. Package manager — pnpm, npm, bun, or yarn. Pre-selected to the manager that invoked the CLI (detected via package-manager-detector), falling back to pnpm.
3. Features — a multi-select of every prunable feature, all pre-checked. The core features (auth, orgs) are always on and aren't shown as toggles. See the feature picker for how selections resolve.
4. Dashboard shell — a single-select for the dashboard chrome layout: topnav (the classic top nav, the default), sidebar, vercel (header + tabs), or stripe (sidebar + top bar). All four render the same navigation; the choice deletes the other three shells and points the app at the one you picked.

The app is written to a new directory named after the project, relative to your current working directory. If that directory already exists and is non-empty, generation refuses to overwrite it and aborts.

Non-interactive

Pass --yes to skip every prompt and generate from flags and defaults. --name is required in this mode:

# The full reference app (all prunable features on)
npx create-saas-starter generate --name my-app --yes

# Only the features you name (plus their dependencies and core)
npx create-saas-starter generate --name my-app --features billing,usage --yes

# The core-only app (auth + orgs, everything prunable removed)
npx create-saas-starter generate --name my-app --features core --yes

# Pick a dashboard shell other than the default topnav
npx create-saas-starter generate --name my-app --shell sidebar --yes

With --yes and no --features, you get the full reference app — every prunable feature on. The package manager defaults to the detected one.

Flags

The --features value is trimmed, split on commas, de-duplicated, and empties are dropped. The sentinel core (case-insensitive) means "core only". Passing an unknown feature name is a loud error naming the offenders.

What generate does

Once it has a name, package manager, and feature selection, generate runs the end-to-end pipeline:

1. Copy the reference app into the target directory (build artifacts, local env files, and the block registry are excluded).
2. Prune — delete deselected features' files and strip their @feature marker regions from every remaining file.
3. Rewrite — collapse the monorepo into a single standalone package.json, drop pruned features' dependencies/scripts/env/compose services, and delete features.json.
4. Stamp and document — write the generated README, the .saas-starter.json stamp, and the .env (with your --database-url if given).
5. Verify in place — install dependencies, generate the Prisma client and Next types, and typecheck. Any failure is a loud abort; the app is left on disk for inspection, never handed over as if it worked.
6. Format and commit — a Prettier pass, then git init and an initial commit (unless --no-git).

For the full mechanics of each step, see the generate flow.

When it finishes, it prints the next steps — covered in First run.