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Your First 15 Minutes

Here's what happens between clicking "sign up" and having a working environment.

1. Sign up for the trial

Sign up starts you on the Basic tier as a 14-day free trial — no card required. You just need an email and a password to get going. On the sign-up form you also pick a Git provider — Forgejo (built-in, zero setup, recommended) or GitHub (beta) — you can switch it later in Settings. See the Git Providers page in Guides & Reference for what "GitHub (beta)" covers today.

2. Auto-provisioning

As soon as your account is created, CompactHive automatically provisions your tenant in the background: a dedicated namespace, your included services, your Git provider, and a starting registry. You don't file a ticket or wait for a human — provisioning kicks off immediately after signup.

While this is happening, the portal and the in-browser coding page will show a "setting up" state and poll until everything is ready. This usually takes a short while; you don't need to refresh manually.

3. What appears in the portal

Once provisioning finishes, your portal dashboard becomes your home base. From there you can:

  • Push to your built-in Forgejo repo, or connect GitHub (beta), so pushes trigger builds.
  • Open Hive Code, the in-portal coding agent, to start building directly in the browser — or connect your own AI coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, …) to the platform over MCP.
  • See your included services (monitoring, database, CI, registry, and more depending on tier).
  • Track deploys through a live timeline: Pushed → Built → Deployed → Live.

4. The onboarding checklist

Using your own agent on Forgejo? Follow Connect Your AI Agent: generate one CompactHive token, connect MCP, configure Git credentials once, then clone/push. OAuth is an alternative for MCP-only clients, not a Git credential.

A short checklist is pinned to the top of your portal sidebar to guide the first steps:

  1. Connect your AI agent, or start building with Hive Code.
  2. Get your first successful build.
  3. Confirm your app is reachable (live).
  4. Invite a teammate or add a custom domain.

You can dismiss the checklist at any point — it's a guide, not a gate. The next page covers exactly which services come with your tenant.