Starters

Starters are reusable presets of project setup choices. They capture configuration, not source files.

Use a Starter

tanstack create my-app --starter https://example.com/starter.json
tanstack create my-app --starter ./local-starter.json

You can also set a starter in the UI flow:

tanstack create my-app --ui

Then use Set Starter and paste the URL to your hosted starter.json.

Create a Starter

# 1. Create project with desired setup
tanstack create my-preset --add-ons clerk,drizzle,sentry

# 2. Initialize starter
cd my-preset
tanstack starter init

# 3. Edit starter-info.json (name/description/banner), then compile
tanstack starter compile

# 4. Use or distribute starter.json
tanstack create new-app --starter ./starter.json

Maintain a Starter

When you update your source preset project:

cd my-preset
tanstack starter compile

Commit and publish the updated starter.json to the same URL (or a versioned URL) used by your team.

Recommended workflow:

Keep your source preset project in git.
Run tanstack starter compile whenever add-ons/options change.
Publish starter.json where it can be fetched over HTTPS.
Use that URL with --starter (CLI) or Set Starter (UI).

Starter Schema

starter-info.json:

json

{
  "id": "my-saas",
  "name": "SaaS Starter",
  "description": "Auth, database, monitoring",
  "framework": "react",
  "mode": "file-router",
  "typescript": true,
  "tailwind": true,
  "addOns": ["clerk", "drizzle", "sentry"],
  "addOnOptions": {
    "drizzle": { "database": "postgres" }
  }
}

Field	Required	Description
id	Yes	Unique identifier
name	Yes	Display name
description	Yes	Brief description
framework	Yes	react or solid
mode	Yes	file-router
typescript	Yes	Enable TypeScript
tailwind	Yes	Include Tailwind
addOns	Yes	Add-on IDs
addOnOptions	No	Per-add-on config
banner	No	Image URL shown in UI

banner should be a publicly accessible image URL (PNG/JPG/WebP) used by the create UI. A screenshot of the starter works well.

Example: