diff --git a/app/controllers/api/projects_controller.rb b/app/controllers/api/projects_controller.rb
index 1ebb350f9..c11463d8e 100644
--- a/app/controllers/api/projects_controller.rb
+++ b/app/controllers/api/projects_controller.rb
@@ -5,9 +5,9 @@
 module Api
   class ProjectsController < ApiController
     before_action :authorize_user, only: %i[create update index destroy]
-    before_action :load_project, only: %i[show update destroy show_context]
+    before_action :load_project, only: %i[show update destroy show_context], unless: -> { params[:id] == "blank-scratch-starter" }
     before_action :load_projects, only: %i[index]
-    load_and_authorize_resource
+    load_and_authorize_resource unless: -> { params[:id] == "blank-scratch-starter" }
     before_action :verify_lesson_belongs_to_school, only: :create
     after_action :pagination_link_header, only: %i[index]
 
@@ -17,6 +17,9 @@ def index
     end
 
     def show
+      if params[:id] == "blank-scratch-starter"
+        render :scratch_starter, formats: [:json] and return
+      end
       if !@project.school_id.nil? && @project.lesson_id.nil?
         project_with_user = @project.with_user(current_user)
         @user = project_with_user[1]
diff --git a/app/views/api/projects/scratch_starter.json.jbuilder b/app/views/api/projects/scratch_starter.json.jbuilder
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9a95f830c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/app/views/api/projects/scratch_starter.json.jbuilder
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+json.meta do
+  json.vm "11.5.0"
+  json.agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/139.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
+  json.semver "3.0.0"
+end
+
+json.targets do
+  json.array! [
+    {
+      name: "Stage",
+      lists: {},
+      tempo: 60,
+      blocks: {},
+      sounds: [],
+      volume: 100,
+      isStage: true,
+      comments: {},
+      costumes: [
+        {
+          name: "backdrop1",
+          md5ext: "cd21514d0531fdffb22204e0ec5ed84a.svg",
+          assetId: "cd21514d0531fdffb22204e0ec5ed84a",
+          dataFormat: "svg",
+          rotationCenterX: 240,
+          rotationCenterY: 180
+        }
+      ],
+      variables: {
+        "`jEk@4|i[#Fk?(8x)AV.-my variable": ["my variable", 0]
+      },
+      broadcasts: {},
+      layerOrder: 0,
+      videoState: "on",
+      currentCostume: 0,
+      videoTransparency: 50,
+      textToSpeechLanguage: nil
+    }
+  ]
+end
+
+json.monitors []
+json.extensions []
\ No newline at end of file