First hour
The order that saves the most time, from claiming the installation to setting your own prices.
The installation is running and the browser is open. This page is the shortest path from that moment to an installation you would be willing to show somebody. It takes about an hour, and most of it is decisions rather than work.
1. Claim it, which means making the first administrator
Nobody can sign in until one administrator exists, because an installation with no owner has nobody to
trust. The installer does this for you when you give it ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD, or you can run
the command yourself:
npx convex run admin:bootstrapIt reads ADMIN_EMAIL, ADMIN_PASSWORD and optionally ADMIN_NAME from the deployment's environment,
creates that account with the owner role, and does nothing at all if an administrator already exists. It is
safe to run twice.
Use an address you control, and a password you do not use elsewhere
This account is the one that can change everything, including who else is an administrator. It is also the account the installation treats as its owner. A password you reuse anywhere is the whole installation's password.
2. Sign in and change the password
Go to /sign-in and use those credentials. Then open your own account settings and change the password:
Change the password there. Every other session you own can be ended from the same pane.
Sign in at /admin-login as well: the panel has its own door, and it is the
one you will use most.
3. Make it yours: Brand → Branding
The installation is wearing the name it shipped with. Brand → Branding is where the name, the tagline, the
logo, the favicon, the accent colour and the corner radius are set. Two of those have consequences beyond
appearance:
| Field | Where it shows up besides the header |
|---|---|
| Name | Page titles, emails, the browser tab, the account menu |
| Tagline | The default page description a search engine reads |
| Logo | The marketing header, the auth screens, the docs header |
| Favicon | Every tab, every bookmark |
| Accent colour | Buttons, highlights, focus borders across the whole product |
4. Give the assistant a real model: Intelligence → Providers & keys
Out of the box the assistant answers with canned words over the real streaming path. Adding one provider key
turns it into an assistant. Intelligence → Providers & keys holds the keys, Intelligence → Models holds
which models are offered, how they are grouped into the three tiers your users see, and which of them are
live.
A key can also be left in the deployment's environment
For an installation whose keys are managed outside the panel, put them in the deployment's environment instead and the panel will show them as set. See Model keys.
5. Decide who may sign up: System → Security
The shipped answer is friendly so that a fresh installation is easy to test. A public address usually wants something stricter. The choices are: anyone, only people who were invited, or only people on email domains you list. The same screen sets the password floor and how long a session lasts.
6. Set your prices: Money → Plans & pricing and Money → Payments
Plans, prices, what each plan unlocks and the weekly credit allowance live under Money. Two things are
worth doing in this order:
- Plans & pricing: name the plans, set the prices, decide which one is featured. The allowance follows from the price, so the shipped rule keeps credits proportional and you can override it per plan.
- Payments: connect a gateway and put it in live mode when you are ready. Until a gateway is configured, the pricing page says so rather than offering a button that fails.
7. Fill in the legal pages: Content → Legal pages
/legal/privacy, /legal/terms, /legal/cookies, /legal/acceptable-use and /legal/refunds are already
routes, and they already render. What they render is a starting point written by somebody who is not your
lawyer. The screen holds the identity fields (entity, address, contact, country) and a body per page with a
version and an effective date.
The shipped text is a starting point, not a policy
Replace it with text you are willing to stand behind, in your own jurisdiction, before you take money from anyone. Nothing else in this manual matters as much as this paragraph.
8. Look at it as a stranger would
Open the landing page in a private window. Read it as a visitor: is the offer clear in five seconds?
Sign up with a second email address and go through onboarding, to see what your users see.
Send yourself a confirmation email. If it does not arrive, that is
RESEND_API_KEY or EMAIL_FROM.
Ask the assistant something real in a project, and accept one change it proposes.
Open System → Status & health and make sure the four checks are green.
The hour after that
| I want to | Go to | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Add Google or GitHub sign in | The deployment's environment | Google sign in |
| Understand the eight panel groups | Insight through System | The panel |
| Put it on a real address with TLS | The host, then two variables | Running it for real |
| Know which screens can lose something | System → Advanced, System → Backups | What is irreversible |
| Set up local development against the same database | A terminal | Setting up from a terminal |