Quickstart

Create a Lettercamp publication and see your first article in a local preview.

Prerequisites

Install Node.js 22.23.4 or newer, with npm. You need an internet connection to install the CLI packages, which include the starter. Check your version with node --version.

Create and preview

Create a publication

npm create lettercamp@latest my-publication
cd my-publication

Choose a starter preset when prompted. Setup copies the bundled starter and installs the CLI inside your project. The destination must be new or empty. Images and the fonts used by the starter presets are included in public/. To use hosted images and fonts instead, see the optional remote assets setup.

Start your preview

npm run dev -- --open

The CLI opens your publication in the browser and prints the preview URL. It uses port 3000 when available and selects another port if needed.

Write an article

Create pages/hello-world.mdx:

---
title: "Hello, world"
description: "The first note from my new publication."
date: "2026-11-05"
---

This is my first article. Thanks for reading.

Save the file. Your preview reloads, and the article appears on the homepage. Open it to read your post. You can also edit or remove the starter articles in pages/. Press Ctrl+C to stop the preview.

Next steps

Write pages to learn about Markdown, MDX, and drafts.
Site settings explains how to name your publication.
Deploy to Lettercamp when you are ready to publish.
Build for another host to host the static site yourself.

For setup options or an existing global installation, see Create a publication.

Getting started

Writing

Content components

Design

Site settings

Custom components

Publishing

CLI

Prerequisites

Create and preview

Next steps