# Get started with Thor

Build a buying experience, connect your business systems, or extend the Thor dashboard.
Thor provides the catalog, pricing, inventory, customer, checkout, and order APIs those workflows use.
Start with the path that matches what you want to ship.

## Choose your first outcome

| You want to | Start here | You will finish with |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Understand what Thor does | [How Thor fits together](/getting-started/platform) | A clear split between commerce configuration and your application |
| Connect a service | [Admin quickstart](/getting-started/admin-quickstart) | A successful read and a draft product |
| Customize a working storefront | [Next.js storefront](/guides/storefront/nextjs) | A local storefront using your project and market configuration |
| Build a storefront from scratch | [Storefront quickstart](/getting-started/storefront-quickstart) | A catalog response and a cart |
| Prepare an empty project | [Configure a store](/guides/catalog/configure-store) | Store and channel IDs for your first product |
| Test the complete purchase path | [Your first order](/getting-started/first-order) | A test order you can inspect in Admin |
| Extend the dashboard | [Build an embedded app](/guides/apps/getting-started) | An authenticated app route |

## What you need

Use a project slug and credentials issued for the same environment.
The Admin API is for trusted code; never include its credentials in a browser bundle.
For Storefront work, use a prepared store and a product with a sellable variant, or follow the catalog setup guides first.
Use your configured test payment method while developing a purchase flow.

The examples use a Copenhagen Lamp to connect the guides.
Names and placeholder IDs are illustrative.
Keep IDs returned by your own project and pass them into later steps rather than pasting another environment's values.

## Work with a coding agent

Use [Build with an AI agent](/guides/ai-agents) to provide a bounded task, retrieve Markdown guides, and verify operations before making changes.
The same guides serve humans and agents: prerequisites, steps, expected outcomes, and recovery behavior remain explicit.

Use [concepts](/concepts) for modeling decisions, [guides](/guides) for implementation, and the API reference for exact field contracts.