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Getting Started with Airdraft Cloud

Create your account, set up a team and project, and make your first content API call in under 10 minutes.

3 min read470 words

This guide walks you through creating your Airdraft Cloud account, setting up a team and project, connecting GitHub, and making your first content API call.

Self-hosting instead? Skip to Self-hosted Quickstart.

Step 1 — Create your account

  1. Go to app.airdraft.space.
  2. Click Sign up and enter your email address.
  3. Check your inbox for a magic link or one-time code.
  4. Click the link to land on the dashboard.

You can also sign in with GitHub or Google if you prefer.

Step 2 — Create a team

After your first login, you'll be prompted to create a team. Teams are the top-level billing and membership unit.

  1. Enter a team name (e.g. your company or project name).
  2. Click Create team.

Your team is created and you land on the team dashboard. You're the admin by default.

Tip: Invite collaborators later from Settings → Team.

Step 3 — Create a project

A project is one CMS instance — one schema, one set of content, one API endpoint.

  1. Click New project in the sidebar.
  2. Enter a project name (e.g. My Blog).
  3. Click Create.

Your project is created with a unique API URL:

https://api.airdraft.space/cms/<project-id>/

Step 4 — Connect GitHub (optional)

Connecting GitHub lets Airdraft sync your content as MDX/JSON files in a repository — useful as a backup or to enable Git-based workflows.

  1. In your project, go to Settings → GitHub.
  2. Click Connect GitHub and authorise the Airdraft GitHub App.
  3. Select the repository and branch to sync content to.
  4. Click Save.

Content you create in the dashboard will now be committed to the repository automatically.

Step 5 — Get your API key

Your API key authenticates requests from your frontend or server to the CMS API.

  1. Go to Settings → API Keys.
  2. Click New API key, give it a name, and click Create.
  3. Copy the key immediately — it's shown only once.

Store the key in an environment variable:

# .env.local
CMS_API_KEY=ntk_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
NEXT_PUBLIC_CMS_API_URL=https://api.airdraft.space/cms/<project-id>

Step 6 — Make your first API call

Install the client:

npm install @airdraft/client

Then query your content:

// lib/cms.ts
import { AirdraftClient } from '@airdraft/client'

export const client = new AirdraftClient({
  apiUrl: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_CMS_API_URL!,
  auth: { type: 'apiKey', token: process.env.CMS_API_KEY! },
})

// Fetch all published posts
const result = await client.entries.list('posts', { status: 'published' })
// result.data    → entry objects
// result.meta    → { total, page, pages, hasNext, hasPrev }

If you haven't defined any collections yet, the response will be empty. Continue to Define your schema next.

Step 7 — Define your schema

Head to your project's Schema tab in the dashboard. The visual schema editor lets you create collections and add fields without touching a config file.

Alternatively, you can define the schema in code — see Defining your schema.

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