Skip to content

Getting Started

Here’s everything you need to start your first Pegasus project.

Visual learner? The above video should get you going. Else read on below for the play-by-play.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to purchase a Pegasus License on saaspegasus.com.

Then, create a new project on saaspegasus.com, following the prompts and filling in whatever configuration options you want to use for your new project. Make sure that the “license” field at the bottom is set.

Once you’re done, connect your project to Github or download your project’s source code as a zip file.

Note: it’s recommended to use the Github integration which will make future upgrades and changes to your project easier to manage.

It is highly recommended to use git for source control. Install git and then follow the instructions below:

If you created your project on Github, you can use git clone to get the code. Get your git URL from the Github page and then run the following command, swapping in your user account and project id:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/user/project-id.git

If you chose to use a zip file instead, unzip it to a folder where you want to do your development and then manually initialize your repository:

Terminal window
git init
git add .Building
git commit -am "initial project creation"

It is also recommended to create a pegasus branch at this time for future upgrades.

Terminal window
git branch pegasus

You can read more about upgrading here.

The following prerequisites are needed to run the app in the recommended configuration:

On Windows, you will also need to install make, which you can do by following these instructions.

Once you’ve installed the prerequisites, you can get up and running with the following commands:

Terminal window
make init
make dev # This is not required if running Docker in "full mode"

Open a browser and visit http://localhost:8000 and you should see your application!

Then skip ahead to the post-install steps.

The make quick start commands cover a lot for you. If you’d rather do everything manually, continue to the sections below.

Terminal window
cd {{ project_name }}

You should see your project files, including a manage.py file.

There are several ways of setting up your Python environment.

See this page for information on choosing an option and setting up your environment.

With uv:

Terminal window
# with uv
uv sync
# or if using pip tools
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt

Note: if you have issues installing psycopg2, try installing the dependencies outlined in this thread (specifically python3-dev and libpq-dev).

On Macs you may also need to follow the instructions from this thread. And specifically, run:

Terminal window
brew reinstall openssl
export LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/

If you installed with Github, you’ll have to create your .env file for your environment variables and secrets. You can do this from the example, by running:

Terminal window
cp .env.example .env

If you installed with Postgres, edit the DATABASE_URL value in .env with the appropriate username and password for connecting to your DB.

You will also need to create a database for your project if you haven’t already. Assuming that your postgres admin user is named postgres:

Terminal window
createdb -U postgres -h localhost -p 5432 {{ project_name }}

Followed by the password for the postgres user.

Or, using identity authentication:

Terminal window
sudo -u postgres createdb {{ project_name }}
Terminal window
# with uv
uv run manage.py makemigrations
# or with normal venv
python ./manage.py makemigrations
Terminal window
# with uv
uv run manage.py migrate
# or with normal venv
python ./manage.py migrate
Terminal window
# with uv
uv run manage.py runserver
# or with normal venv
python ./manage.py runserver
Terminal window
npm install
npm run dev

For more details, see the front end docs.

Open a browser and visit http://localhost:8000 and you should see your application!

Continue to the post-installation steps below.

Once up and running, you’ll want to review these common next-steps.

To create your first user account, just go through the sign up flow in your web browser.

From there you should be able to access all built-in functionality and examples.

Use the promote_user_to_superuser management command to enable access to the Django Admin site.

For Stripe callbacks, email links, and JavaScript API clients to work, you must make sure that you have configured absolute URLs correctly.

If you’ve installed with subscriptions, you’ll want to set things up next.

Head to the subscriptions documentation and follow the steps there!

For the progress bar example to work---and to run background tasks of your own---you’ll need a Celery environment running.

Head to celery and follow the steps there!

Pegasus ships with a self-documenting Makefile that will run common commands for you, including starting your containers, performing database operations, and building your front end.

You can run make to list helper functions, and you can view the source of the Makefile file in case you need to add to it or run any once-off commands. Commands are also documented in your project’s AI rules files.

You can add custom commands to the Makefile by editing custom.mk.

At this point, Pegasus has installed scaffolding for all of the user management, authentication, and (optionally) team views and Stripe subscriptions, and given you a beautiful base UI template and clear code structure to work from.

Now that you’re up and running it’s time for the fun part: building your new application!

This can obviously be done however you like. Some examples of things you might want to do next include:

  • Customize your landing page and set up a pricing page
  • Start modifying the list of navigation tabs and logged-in user experience
  • Create a new django app and begin building out your data models in models.py. It’s recommended to use the Pegasus CLI for this.

For some initial pointers on where to to make Pegasus your own, head on over to the Customizations Page.

For the nitty-gritty details on setting up things like email, error logging, sign up flow, analytics, and more go to Settings and Configuration.