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wtf is guide?

anomalyco/guide — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-07-03

★ 3,683SCSSAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

TL;DR

A free online tutorial that teaches you to build and deploy a full-stack web app on AWS, using a note-taking app as the hands-on example.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((SST Guide))
    What It Covers
      Full-stack on AWS
      Serverless API
      User authentication
    Tech Stack
      React
      AWS Lambda
      DynamoDB
      Cognito
    Use Cases
      Build note-taking app
      Learn AWS basics
      Contribute fixes
    Audience
      Web developers
      AWS beginners

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Follow the step-by-step guide to build your first serverless full-stack web app on AWS.

REASON 2

Learn how to wire a React frontend to an AWS Lambda API backed by a DynamoDB database.

REASON 3

Add user sign-up and login to a web app using AWS Cognito.

REASON 4

Contribute a chapter fix or clarification to an open-source developer tutorial.

What's in the stack?

ReactAWS LambdaDynamoDBCognitoJekyllRubypnpmSCSS

How it stacks up

anomalyco/guideemilbaehr/automatic-app-landing-pageofficedev/office-ui-fabric-core
Stars3,6833,6313,745
LanguageSCSSSCSSSCSS
Setup difficultymoderateeasyeasy
Complexity3/51/52/5
Audiencedevelopervibe coderdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires Ruby with Bundler and pnpm installed to run the Jekyll site locally.

Wtf does this do

This repository holds the source code for the SST Guide, a free online tutorial published at guide.sst.dev. The guide teaches people how to build and deploy a full-stack web application using AWS services, with a note-taking app as the running example. It walks through setting up a React front end, a serverless API using AWS Lambda and API Gateway, a database using DynamoDB, and user authentication using Cognito. The guide is written as a Jekyll site, meaning it is a collection of text files that get compiled into a static website. Contributors can run it locally by installing Ruby dependencies through Bundler and JavaScript dependencies through pnpm, then starting a local Jekyll server. An eBook version in PDF and EPUB formats is also generated automatically from the same content whenever a new version is tagged. The project is open source and accepts contributions. People who find bugs in a chapter can open an issue, those who spot typos can submit a pull request with the correction, and anyone running into trouble with a specific chapter can ask for help on the project's Discord community.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Help me set up the SST Guide note-taking app with a React frontend and an AWS Lambda API connected to DynamoDB.
Prompt 2
I'm following the SST Guide and need help configuring AWS Cognito for user authentication.
Prompt 3
Walk me through deploying the SST Guide note-taking app to production on AWS.
Prompt 4
I'm running the SST Guide locally with Jekyll and getting a Bundler dependency error, help me fix it.
Prompt 5
Help me write a pull request that fixes a confusing step in the SST Guide's API Gateway chapter.

Frequently asked questions

wtf is guide?

A free online tutorial that teaches you to build and deploy a full-stack web app on AWS, using a note-taking app as the hands-on example.

What language is guide written in?

Mainly SCSS. The stack also includes React, AWS Lambda, DynamoDB.

How hard is guide to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is guide for?

Mainly developer.

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