cdk-starter

Scaffold production-ready AWS CDK apps from curated starters. No install required — just run it with npx.

Quick start

npx cdk-starter create

Commands

| Command | Description | |---|---| | cdk-starter create | Scaffold a new CDK app from a starter | | cdk-starter list | List all available starters | | cdk-starter info <name> | Show details about a specific starter | | cdk-starter compose | Build a custom stack component by component |

Usage

Create a project

# Interactive — pick a starter from the list
npx cdk-starter create

# Skip the picker
npx cdk-starter create --starter serverless-api

# Use your own starters repo
npx cdk-starter create --repo myorg/my-templates
npx cdk-starter create --repo myorg/my-templates#develop

List starters

npx cdk-starter list
npx cdk-starter list --tag serverless
npx cdk-starter list --json

Get starter details

npx cdk-starter info serverless-api
npx cdk-starter info serverless-api --json

Compose a custom stack

Build a CDK stack interactively by picking components across four infrastructure layers:

npx cdk-starter compose

You'll walk through Networking, Compute, Data, and Utility layers, selecting only the components you need. The CLI generates a fully wired CDK stack with IAM grants, environment variables, and resource connections set up automatically.

Available components: VPC, API Gateway, ALB, NLB, Route 53, Lambda, ECS Fargate, DynamoDB, S3, Aurora Serverless v2, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, CloudWatch Alarms, Secrets Manager.

Available starters

| Starter | Description | |---|---| | serverless-api | API Gateway + Lambda + DynamoDB REST API | | static-site | S3 + CloudFront static site with HTTPS | | scheduled-lambda | EventBridge-scheduled Lambda with DynamoDB | | event-driven-pipeline | EventBridge + SQS + Lambda fan-out pipeline | | vpc-network | Production VPC with public/private subnets | | cognito-auth | Cognito User Pool + API Gateway JWT auth | | full-stack-webapp | CloudFront + S3 + API Gateway + Lambda + DynamoDB | | ecs-fargate-service | VPC + ALB + ECS Fargate container service | | cicd-pipeline | Self-mutating CDK Pipeline with staging + production | | websocket-api | API Gateway WebSocket with Lambda handlers | | step-functions-workflow | Step Functions + Lambda workflow with API trigger | | bedrock-chatbot | Bedrock (Claude) + Lambda + DynamoDB chatbot API | | data-lake | S3 + Glue + Athena + Lake Formation data lake | | temporal-server | Fargate Based Temporal Server with Aurora PostgreSQL |

Custom starters repo

Point at any GitHub repo that follows the same layout:

index.json              <- manifest
starters/
  <starter-name>/
    cdkapp.json         <- metadata
    README.md
    ...                 <- CDK app files

npx cdk-starter create --repo your-org/your-starters

Links

• Website: cdkapp.com
• Starters repo: github.com/KellyLBrown/CDKApp-Starters

License

MIT