Quickstart for engineers

This quickstart is for engineers implementing Amplitude for the first time. Follow these steps to install the Browser SDK, verify that events flow into your project, and ship your first feature flag.

1. Install

   Add the Browser SDK

   The Browser SDK is the fastest path to getting data into Amplitude. Add it to your site with a script tag or an npm package, then initialize it with your project API key.

   html

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   <script type="text/javascript">
     !function(){"use strict";...}();
     amplitude.init('YOUR_API_KEY');
   </script>
   

   Amplitude provides a pre-configured snippet and an AI prompt in your project settings when you first create an account — go to your project settings to copy the snippet for your region.

   Once initialized, call amplitude.track('Event Name', { property: 'value' }) to send your first custom event.

2. Capture

   Enable Autocapture

   Autocapture tracks clicks, page views, sessions, form interactions, file downloads, and marketing attribution without any manual event calls. Enable it by passing autocapture: true during initialization:

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   amplitude.init('YOUR_API_KEY', { autocapture: true });
   

   Check your Amplitude project's Live Events view to confirm events are arriving. You don't need to add any additional tracking code for the behaviors Autocapture handles.

   Autocapture is best for capturing broad behavioral data. For business-critical actions — purchases, upgrades, key feature usage — add explicit amplitude.track() calls so those events carry the right properties.

3. Experiment

   Launch a feature flag

   Feature Experiment lets you roll out changes to a subset of users without a code deployment. Create a flag in the Amplitude UI, add the SDK to your codebase, and check the flag value at runtime:

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   const variant = experiment.variant('my-flag');
   if (variant.value === 'treatment') {
     // show new feature
   }
   

   Go to Feature flag rollouts for a full walkthrough of targeting rules, gradual rollouts, and flag cleanup.

Next steps