Set Up Access, Environment, and Tools

Here you'll learn what systems you need to access, how to access them, and how to configure your local environment.

Access and credentials

Adobe Experience Cloud Identity Management Service (IMS) organization membership, with a Developer or System Admin role, is needed to access App Builder.

If your organization has a license for App Builder, use the IMS organization selected by the person who purchased it
If you are using App Builder as a trial, use the IMS organization that you requested or was assigned to you when the trial was initiated

If you do not have access to an organization:
- Customers should request access from their account manager
- Partners should request App Builder access from their partner manager, or Sandbox access though the Adobe Solution Partner Portal

App Builder access is available under a purchased license or as a trial. For example, the AEM Headless trial includes App Builder.

Adobe Developer Console gives you access to APIs, SDKs, and developer tools. It also provides a way to set up your credentials.

A GitHub account is optional but highly recommended for setting up your CI/CD workflow.

Local environment setup

Required tools

NodeJS, version 18 or 20 (odd versions are not recommended), which will also install the npm package manager. We recommend nvm for NodeJS installation and version management.

Adobe I/O Command Line Interface (CLI)

npm install -g @adobe/aio-cli
If Adobe I/O CLI is already installed, please make sure you have the latest version:
- Check your CLI version using aio -v and compare it tonpm show @adobe/aio-cli version. If your CLI is outdated, update it by running npm install -g @adobe/aio-cli.
- Even if your Adobe I/O CLI is up to date, run aio update to make sure all core plugins are updated.
- For seven days after release of a new version of Adobe I/O CLI, you'll see a message like this before the command output:

›   Warning: @adobe/aio-cli update available from 3.3.0 to 3.4.1.
›   Run npm install -g @adobe/aio-cli to update.
Copied to your clipboard
›   Warning: @adobe/aio-cli update available from 3.3.0 to 3.4.1.
›   Run npm install -g @adobe/aio-cli to update.

Supported local environments

We aim to provide similar quality of local development experience on Windows 10 and 11, and MacOS 10.14 and higher. Adobe I/O CLI and its plugins are automatically tested against NodeJS versions 14 and 16 on both Windows and Linux Xenial.

Supported terminals for the CLI

The CLI uses the popular inquirer package for all its interactive functions such as application generators.

See inquirer's Support section and its known issues for up-to-date details.

Optional tool

If you intend to use local development (aio app dev) features provided by the CLI, you will also need:

Visual Studio Code, the supported integrated development environment (IDE) for editing, debugging, etc. You may use any other IDE as a code editor, but advanced usage like debugging is not yet supported.