# Statamic Peak is a PHP starter kit that decides a lot for you > Peak is an opinionated Statamic starter kit that bundles Tailwind CSS, AlpineJS, a page builder, fieldsets, blueprints, SEO tooling and a set of templates, so a new project starts from decisions rather than a blank folder. It is GPL licensed, but Statamic itself is commercial software, and the project runs on one maintainer's time and sponsorship. **studio1902/statamic-peak** — Statamic Peak is an opinionated starter kit for all your Statamic sites. - Repository: https://github.com/studio1902/statamic-peak - Stars: 700 · Forks: 105 - Language: PHP - License: GPL-3.0 - Published: 2026-10-21 · Updated: 2026-10-21 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/studio1902-statamic-peak ## Opinionated in structure, agnostic in design Statamic Peak is described as an opinionated starter kit for all your Statamic sites, and the README spends a paragraph untangling what that means. It is design agnostic but comes bundled with tools like Tailwind CSS and AlpineJS and a workflow you can use to build anything you want. So the opinion is about structure, not about pixels. What you inherit is a page builder, a rich collection of starter templates, fieldsets, blueprints, SEO functionality, configuration and more, and the README claims Peak is easy to extend or edit to fit your clients' website needs and will drastically improve your development speed. The rationale is repetition. The aim of Peak is to make it easy to start new projects as they often share much of the same principles, and the README says that whether you are new to Statamic or a veteran there will be something interesting in there. Two facts frame everything else. The licence is the GNU General Public License v3.0, and the README is explicit that Statamic itself is commercial software with its own licence. So Peak is the free half of a pair, and adopting it commits you to the paid half. The primary language is PHP, and the repository topics list Antlers, AlpineJS, Tailwind, favicons, cookie consent and SEO alongside the starter kit and page builder labels. ## One maintainer, sponsorship and paid support The README is unusually direct about the economics of the project. It says maintaining Peak demands a lot of the maintainer's time and that it probably saves you a lot, and that sponsorship would mean a great deal because it makes it much easier to maintain the project and keep improving it. There is a sponsor link to the maintainer's GitHub profile and a separate pointer to official support on the maintainer's website. That is a real operating model, and it has an obvious reading for an adopter. The code is free and the licence is permissive in the usual GPL sense, but the person who answers your questions and keeps the kit current is available as a paid arrangement. For an agency that ships client sites, that is a reasonable shape, because the alternative is paying the same person in maintenance time later. The documentation lives at peak.1902.studio, and the contributing section points at a page on how to contribute, with the Code of Conduct at `.github/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md` and a note that contributions and discussions are welcome no matter how large or small. The README also asks people to participate and discuss how to make their websites better, which is the request a starter kit makes when it expects to be shaped by the people using it. ## What the repository contains The top level is small and tells you the shape of the thing. There is `starter-kit.yaml`, the manifest that marks the project as a Statamic starter kit, `StarterKitPostInstall.php`, the hook that runs after the installer copies the kit into a project, and `composer.json` for the PHP dependencies. There is `.env.example`, the environment template, and an `export/` directory, which is where the kit's own assets and templates live before they are copied into a target project. Alongside that sit the ordinary project files: `CHANGELOG.md`, `CONTRIBUTING.md`, `LICENSE`, `README.md`, `.editorconfig` and `.styleci.yml` for code style, and a `.github/` directory. The starter kit mechanism matters more than it sounds. Because Peak is installed into an existing Statamic project rather than used as a dependency, the kit is copied in and then it is yours, which is what makes the claim about editing it to fit a client true. The `StarterKitPostInstall.php` file is the one place where the kit does something automatically at install time rather than leaving you to wire it up by hand. There is no install command in the README itself. The path the project gives you is the documentation site, and the project page on the maintainer's site is where the commercial support offering is described. ## The .env template is the real configuration surface The environment example is long, and reading it tells you more about the kit than the feature list does. The Laravel style base is familiar: `APP_NAME="Statamic Peak"`, `APP_ENV=local`, an empty `APP_KEY`, `APP_DEBUG=true`, `APP_TIMEZONE="UTC"`, and `APP_LOCALE=en` with `APP_FALLBACK_LOCALE=en`. Then the services. The database is SQLite by default, with the MySQL style variables commented out. Sessions use the file driver with a 120 minute lifetime, the cache store is file, the queue connection is sync, and the log level is debug. The mail section points at a local SMTP server on port 1025, and the AWS block is a set of empty placeholders with a bucket and a region of us-east-1. And then the Statamic block, which is the part a Peak user actually edits: ``` STATAMIC_LICENSE_KEY= STATAMIC_THEME=business STATAMIC_PRO_ENABLED=false STATAMIC_STACHE_WATCHER=auto STATAMIC_STATIC_CACHING_STRATEGY=null STATAMIC_CACHE_TAGS_ENABLED=false STATAMIC_REVISIONS_ENABLED=false STATAMIC_GRAPHQL_ENABLED=false STATAMIC_API_ENABLED=false STATAMIC_GIT_ENABLED=false STATAMIC_GIT_PUSH=false STATAMIC_GIT_DISPATCH_DELAY=5 ``` Read that as a capability checklist. The licence key is empty in the template, so the first thing you do is supply one. The theme is called `business`, which tells you the kit ships more than one direction and that you switch between them by name. Pro features, static caching, cache tags, revisions, GraphQL, the API and the Git integration are all off by default and switched on per project, and the Git push behaviour has its own delay setting of 5. The tail of the file shows the branding escape hatches, including a custom logo path pointing at a Peak logo SVG, with custom favicon and custom CSS URL lines available and commented out. ## What you get for the opinions you accept It is worth being concrete about the trade, because starter kits are often evaluated on the wrong axis. What Peak saves you is the repeated assembly work. A fieldset per content type, a blueprint per collection, a page builder so editors can compose pages without a developer, SEO defaults rather than a per-site invention, a Tailwind setup, an AlpineJS setup, a Vite build wired to the Laravel environment through `VITE_APP_NAME="${APP_NAME}"`, and a set of templates that already work together. For a studio that starts a new site every few weeks, that is real time. What it costs you is the argument with the kit. The templates are opinionated about structure, the theme is selected by name, the page builder assumes a content model, and the fieldsets describe a way of modelling content. Every one of those is a decision you did not make and may not want. The README's promise that it is easy to extend or edit is the answer to this, but editing someone else's structure is more work than writing your own, and it is work you do every time you take the kit rather than once. The design agnostic claim is what makes this tolerable. Because the styling is Tailwind rather than a bespoke stylesheet, replacing the look is a matter of classes and a theme choice, while the content model underneath stays. ## Release cadence, files and the shape of the project The release history shows a project in steady iteration. The tags are v22.2.0 from 2026-09-23, v22.1.1 from 2026-09-09 and v22.1.0 from 2026-08-27, and the last push was on 2026-09-23, the same day as the newest tag. The numbering is a high minor version on a two digit line, which reads like a kit that has been revised many times and is now versioned independently of the CMS it targets. That independence is the design. Since Statamic is a commercial product with its own release cycle, and Peak ships as a copied set of files rather than a Composer dependency, a kit update is a diff you review and apply, not a version constraint you satisfy. The `CHANGELOG.md` is therefore the file to read before copying a new version into an existing site, and the `export/` directory is where you look to see what would change. The remaining conventions are the small ones. `.styleci.yml` and `.editorconfig` fix the code style of the kit itself, `CONTRIBUTING.md` and the Code of Conduct cover the process, and the `starter-kit.yaml` manifest is what tells Statamic's installer that this repository is a starter kit it may offer to install. ## When Peak is the wrong choice The clearest case is a team that needs an open source CMS. The README is explicit that Statamic itself is commercial software and has its own licence, and the `STATAMIC_LICENSE_KEY` in the environment template is empty for a reason. If the licensing of the CMS is the deciding factor, no amount of GPL in the kit changes it. The second case is a single site with unusual requirements. The value of a starter kit scales with repetition. One site with an unusual content model will spend more time bending fieldsets and templates than the kit saves in setup, and the page builder becomes a constraint rather than a convenience. The third case is a team that does not want a single point of failure. The README asks for sponsorship to keep one person's work going, offers paid support on the maintainer's site, and expects the documentation and the discussions to live in the same place. That is a perfectly good arrangement for a small studio, and it is a concentration of risk for an organisation that expects a community around the project. One more observation for anyone reading the repository. The README opens with a political appeal before it describes the project at all. That is the maintainer's prerogative and it says nothing about the code, but it is worth knowing if you were expecting a purely technical read of the repository, and it is another reason to judge the project on the files rather than on the README. ## Conclusion Adopt Statamic Peak when you build several Statamic sites for clients, want them to share one structure, and are happy to inherit a page builder, fieldset layout and configuration surface you did not design. Do not adopt it if you need an open source CMS, since Statamic itself is commercial software with its own licence, and do not adopt it if a single opinionated decision in the layout will cost you more than it saves. Verify first that `STATAMIC_LICENSE_KEY` and the `STATAMIC_PRO_ENABLED` flag match the Statamic tier you licensed, that the theme named by `STATAMIC_THEME` is the one you intend to edit, and that the version you install matches the tag you read, since the repository is at v22.2.0 and the last push was on 2026-09-23. ## FAQ ### What is Statamic Peak? It is an opinionated starter kit for Statamic sites, written in PHP, that bundles Tailwind CSS, AlpineJS, a page builder, starter templates, fieldsets, blueprints, SEO functionality and configuration. The README describes it as design agnostic, and the licence is the GNU General Public License v3.0. ### Is Statamic Peak free to use commercially? The kit itself is under the GNU General Public License v3.0, but the README states that Statamic itself is commercial software with its own licence, and the environment template ships an empty STATAMIC_LICENSE_KEY. You need a Statamic licence to use the CMS the kit is built for. ### What do I configure first after installing Statamic Peak? The .env.example file shows the surface. You set your Statamic licence key, choose the theme with STATAMIC_THEME, which is `business` by default, and switch on the features you need, such as STATAMIC_PRO_ENABLED, STATAMIC_STATIC_CACHING_STRATEGY, STATAMIC_GRAPHQL_ENABLED or the Git options. ### How is Statamic Peak maintained? The README says maintaining Peak demands a lot of the maintainer's time, asks for sponsorship through GitHub Sponsors, and points to paid support on the maintainer's website. The repository is not archived, the last push was on 2026-09-23, and the recent tags are v22.2.0, v22.1.1 and v22.1.0. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/studio1902/statamic-peak/issues) - [License: GPL-3.0](https://github.com/studio1902/statamic-peak/blob/main/LICENSE) - [README](https://github.com/studio1902/statamic-peak/blob/main/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/studio1902/statamic-peak/releases) - [studio1902/statamic-peak on GitHub](https://github.com/studio1902/statamic-peak) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/studio1902-statamic-peak