Installation

What you'll have afterwards:

• A Nuxt 4 app running on http://localhost:3000, with sign-up, sign-in and account pages.
• You, signed in with the admin role, so the admin area at /admin is open to you.
• A local database with every table the app needs.

Every new app starts from a starter: a ready-made project you copy instead of wiring the modules yourself. This page uses the workspace starter, a web app with sign-in, account pages and user management. For a mobile app, see Other starters.

Requirements

This is the only requirements table in these docs. Other pages list only the extra tools they need.

1. Create the project

The starters live in .starters/ of the Frigear repository. Copy one with the CLI or with giget. Either way you get a pnpm workspace that uses the published @frigear-nu modules and builds on its own.

corepack enable
pnpm create frigear-app my-app --platform web
cd my-app
git init

pnpx giget@latest gh:Frigear-nu/frigear-nu/.starters/workspace my-app
cd my-app
git init
corepack enable
pnpm install

pnpm create frigear-app runs the CLI's init command. It also names the root package after the folder. It then runs pnpm install and pnpm prepare:env for you.

2. Run it for the first time

Create apps/web/.env from the example file:

pnpm prepare:env

scripts/prepare-env.mjs copies every apps/*/.env.example to .env. It fills in empty secrets, here NUXT_APP_SECRET, which seals the session cookie. It never overwrites a value, so it is safe to run again.

Then set the one variable that is yours in apps/web/.env:

Start the app:

pnpm dev

On the first start, NuxtHub creates a local SQLite database in apps/web/.data/. It applies the committed migrations to it.

3. Sign in

1. Open http://localhost:3000 and choose Create account. Sign up with the email you put in NUXT_ACL_ADMINS.
2. Verify the address. The starter has verifyEmail on, so signing up sends a verification email instead of signing you in. The log driver prints it in the terminal that runs pnpm dev: open its link and press Continue. The list only counts for a verified address, so nobody else can claim your admin role by signing up with it first.
3. You land on /account, with Profile, Security and API tokens pages. An Admin badge shows that the list matched.
4. Open /admin for the admin dashboard. Users (/admin/users) lists, creates and edits users.

Other starters

Compare the starters

Each guide has its own create and first-run steps. The rest of Get Started follows the workspace starter.

Use an existing Nuxt 4 app

To add the modules to a host app you already have, instead of starting from a starter:

1. Install the modules and their peers:

   pnpm add @frigear-nu/users @frigear-nu/authorization @frigear-nu/account @frigear-nu/menu \
     @nuxthub/core @nuxt/ui @libsql/client drizzle-orm drizzle-kit tailwindcss \
     @simplewebauthn/browser @simplewebauthn/server
   

2. Add the modules and options from Configuration to your nuxt.config.ts.
3. Load Nuxt UI's styles in your CSS (@import "tailwindcss"; @import "@nuxt/ui";). Wrap the app in <UApp>.
4. Set NUXT_APP_SECRET in production (32+ characters; Nuxt generates one in development). For the first admin, copy server/plugins/authorization-roles.ts from the starter and define authorization.roles.
5. Run nuxt db generate and commit server/db/migrations.

Next steps

• Project structure – find your way around the files the starter created.
• Authentication – turn on more sign-in methods and protect your own routes.
• Adding modules – add forms, payments, events and the rest.