What is a starter?

A starter is exactly as it sounds - a starting point to build your next Gatsby project. They contain all the logic you need to get up and running in a few commons scenarios.

While the more common ones are set up by Gatsby themselves, anybody can make a starter. All that is required is a repository URL.

by default, the Gatsby CLI will use gatsby-starter-default. This gives you a couple of placeholder pages and 404 handling to work with. It also contains empty files for common actions like gatsby-node.js so they're set up and ready to go.

How do I use a starter?

When starting a project, the CLI takes a starter as the final argument. For example:

gatsby new starter-site https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-default

Where can I find a starter?

You can grab starters from anywhere, but the best place is the Gatsby Starter Library.