---
title: Quick Start
description: Get up and running with pgmold in 60 seconds
---
## 1. Create a schema file
```sql
-- schema.sql
CREATE TABLE users (
id BIGINT PRIMARY KEY,
email TEXT NOT NULL,
created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT now()
);
```
## 2. See what would change
```bash
pgmold plan -s sql:schema.sql -d postgres://localhost/mydb
```
This compares your SQL file against the live database and shows the migration plan.
## 3. Apply the migration
```bash
pgmold apply -s sql:schema.sql -d postgres://localhost/mydb
```
All operations run in a single transaction. If anything fails, nothing changes.
## 4. Detect drift
```bash
pgmold drift -s sql:schema.sql -d postgres://localhost/mydb --json
```
Returns exit code 1 if the database has drifted from your schema files. Use this in CI.
## Next steps
- [Multi-file schemas](/guides/multi-file-schemas/) — organize your schema across directories
- [Filtering](/guides/filtering/) — include/exclude objects by name or type
- [CI/CD integration](/guides/ci-cd/) — add schema checks to your pipeline
- [Adopting pgmold](/guides/adopting/) — baseline an existing database