Getting started

Quickstart

Five minutes from signup to a live preview URL.

This page gets you from a fresh signup to a live preview URL. There are two paths to step 2 — pick the one that matches what you have.

1. Create your workspace

Sign in at showly.ai. Three sign-in methods are supported: email + passkey, GitHub, and Google. The first time you sign in we provision a workspace named after your account. You can rename it later in Workspace settings.

New workspaces start on the Free plan, which includes a single site and a scoped MCP token — enough to run through the rest of this quickstart end-to-end. See the pricing page for current plan limits.

2. Bring in a site — pick one

You can either start from a template (no repo required) or connect an existing GitHub repository.

A. Start from a template (faster, no GitHub)

Open [/onboarding/from-template](/onboarding/from-template). Three starters ship today:

  • SaaS landing — a single-page marketing site (Next.js)
  • Docs site — a markdown-driven docs page (Next.js)
  • Portfolio — a personal site with about + projects sections (Next.js)

Pick one, fill the variable form (site_slug, project, and any template-specific knobs), and submit. Showly creates the site, materializes the template files, and kicks off the first build. You'll land on the new site's detail page where the build status appears.

This path is the fastest way to a preview URL — no GitHub OAuth, no install, no waiting on a webhook.

B. Connect a repo

From the workspace home, click Connect a site and register a GitHub repository. The first time you connect, GitHub prompts you to authorize the Showly GitHub App — see Your first site for what that grant covers. Once authorized, Showly's import step reads your repository metadata on demand — package.json, the lockfile, and any framework hints — to:

  • detect the framework (Astro, Vite, Next.js export, or static HTML)
  • propose a build command and output directory

Confirm the proposed manifest. You can override any field before continuing.

Both paths converge at step 3.

3. Connect an agent (optional but recommended)

Register the Showly MCP server with your agent:

npx @showly/mcp-server install --to claude-code   # or --to codex

That's the whole setup — no token to copy. The first time you invoke a Showly tool, your agent opens a browser tab to sign in and approve access; Showly then issues a scoped token to the agent directly. See Installing the Skill for how the authorization handshake works and the no-browser fallback.

You can now ask Claude Code or Codex to read your site context, propose a change plan, and create a preview — without giving the agent any production credentials.

4. Make your first change

In the Showly chat panel, or from your agent, say:

Change the hero headline on the homepage to "Ship without ceremony"

The agent will:

  1. Call get_site_context to read the relevant files.
  2. Produce a create_change_plan proposal.
  3. Call apply_site_patch to stage the edits in a Showly-managed workspace.
  4. Call create_preview to build and produce a preview URL.

When the build finishes (usually under 90s), you'll see the preview URL in chat.

5. Approve and publish

Open the preview URL. Review the diff. When you're ready, click Request publish. This creates a pending approval request that an owner or admin must approve before the preview is promoted to production.

After approval, Showly promotes the preview artifact to production. You'll see the new live URL in the Releases panel.

What's next