Hello, World

Mountain Labs is a headless CMS with a GraphQL API, built for developers who want full control over their content without being locked into a proprietary data model or delivery layer.

By the end of this guide you'll have a page with content sections, queryable via the GraphQL API from any client.

Mountain Labs works with standard GraphQL clients like Apollo and Relay, and any OAuth 2.0-compatible auth library, so whatever your stack, you're covered.

From the console, click Pages in the left sidebar, then Add Page. You'll be asked to give the page a slug — this is the URL-safe identifier you'll use to reference it in the API. Use something like hello-world. The page's directory is automatically derived from the slug.

A page at hello-world lives in the root directory, while a slug like docs/getting-started would place it under the docs/ directory alongside any other pages sharing that path. Once the page is created you'll land in the editor, ready to add content.

In the editor, you'll see a default text section ready to go. Each section has two key parts:

• Slug: a short identifier in the top-left field (e.g. intro). This is how you'll reference the section directly in the API.

• Content: the body of the section, edited visually but stored as Markdown under the hood.

Go ahead and type something in the editor. Sections can be reordered, nested into groups, or queried individually. Your content stays structured regardless of how you present it. A flat list of sections gives you a simple linear document; nesting sections inside a GroupSection lets you model a hierarchy and traverse it as a tree.

Your GraphQL API endpoint is unique to your account. You can find it in the console's settings, under GraphQL API Domain. It follows the pattern https://graph.[username].mountain-labs.io. Always send requests to your own endpoint: requests without an access token, such as a public website reading published pages, are matched to your content by it.

All requests are standard GraphQL POSTs:

POST https://graph.[username].mountain-labs.ioContent-Type: application/jsonAuthorization: Bearer <access_token>

For the full auth setup — registering an OAuth client and obtaining an access token — see the API docs.

With your page created and a section added, run this query to fetch it:

query {  page(ref: { slug: "hello-world" }) {    id    slug    children {      slug      ... on TextSection {        markdown      }    }  }}

children returns the page's top-level sections. To traverse nested content, follow GroupSection.children:

query {  page(ref: { slug: "hello-world" }) {    children {      slug      ... on GroupSection {        children {          slug          ... on TextSection {            markdown          }        }      }      ... on TextSection {        markdown      }    }  }}

To get every section at once instead, at any depth, use sections. Each edge carries the section's place in the tree:

query {  page(ref: { slug: "hello-world" }) {    sections {      edges {        depth        parent        node {          slug          ... on TextSection {            markdown          }        }      }    }  }}

Now that you've created your first page and queried it, here's where to go next:

• Next.js: render your pages in a Next.js site, refreshed as you edit

• Pages: how pages, directories and sections fit together

• Page Editor: learn how to reorder sections, create groups, and use the full editor toolbar

• Pages API: full reference for page queries, mutations, and permissions

• Directories API: read the content tree, and create, delete and reorder pages within it

• Sections API: full reference for adding, editing, and nesting sections

• Publishing and access: make your page public, and control who can read and edit it

• Authentication: get an access token, for your own users or for an application acting on its own