Updated: September 30, 2026

Getting Started with P1

In this guide, we’ll walk through creating a brand new P1 site on Pantheon. Follow this guide in order:

  1. Set up a Pantheon Content Account
  2. Create a Next.js Site With Our Starter Kit
  3. Create a P1 site in the Content Dashboard
  4. Set next.js Site Secrets
  5. Deploy to a Dev Site on Pantheon.io

Set up a Pantheon Content Account

  1. Sign up for a P1 account at https://content.pantheon.io. (Get in touch with us; at this time, it is a private release, and we will need to manually provision access for you).

Create a Next.js Site With Our Starter Kit

Before you start, you need:

  • Node.js 24 or newer
  • pnpm, npm, or yarn
  • git, if you want the scaffolder to create a repository with an initial commit

  1. On your local environment, initialize a site using our SDK starter: 

pnpm create @pantheon-systems/p1-starter-kit

  1. Answer the option questions from the CLI. For these instructions, choose pnpm if you have it installed.

If you choose yarn or npm, then use your package manager's equivalent of pnpm commands in the following steps (they might be done differently, not necessarily just replacing the word pnpm with yarn, for example).

  1. Ensure pnpm install (or npm install) executes locally
  2. Commit and push to your GitHub repository

Create a P1 site in the Content Dashboard

  1. Create your site in P1 dashboard (https://content.pantheon.io)

  1. Once the P1 content site is created, generate a token and get your ID

Choose the scope you want for that first token, typically “All content included draft” for a first use.

  1. The token will only be shown once; save it to personal secrets or in a secure temporary place, or keep the modal open

Set Next.js Site Secrets

  1. Set these secrets on your Pantheon Next.js site.  Your localhost .env can omit the “P1_SITE_URL” (which serves as a redirect location after authentication)

NEXT_PUBLIC_CSS_SITE_ID=your-site-id-from-popup-above
CSS_API_KEY=your-token-from-popup-above
P1_SITE_URL=your-site-url-once-you-have-it-you-can-start-without-for-local-development

  1. Check that the site is executing well on localhost by running pnpm run dev
  2. In particular, test connectivity with the P1 back end by visiting the editor page, appending /p1 to your site URL

Deploy to a Dev Site on Pantheon.io

  1. Push the codebase of your site created above to a GitHub repository
  2. Go to Pantheon.io dashboard to create your hosted Next.js site
  3. Create a Next.js site
  4. When creating that site, choose “from an existing repository” and pick the repository created above
  5. When asked for secrets, paste the secrets above. For P1_SITE_URL, the url should be https://dev-yoursitename.pantheonsite.io
  6. Deploy

At this stage, you should be able to test end-to-end P1 with a hosted site on Pantheon.

From there, you can deploy to a test or live environment if you wish, following our Next.js documentation. A live environment is required for any production use, especially to set your own domain name.