Phase 0 of 4·~5 min

Before you start

Create the third-party accounts you will need and confirm the tools on your machine.

Repository-pinned Node.js and pnpm versionsgita code editor

Accounts you need to create

For Simple init, prepare the selected database and Auth inputs first. Payment, AI and email-delivery accounts can be configured after the local foundation. Better Auth runs in your application; it does not require a separate hosted Auth account. Supabase Auth requires a Supabase project even when PostgreSQL is hosted on Neon.

Service	What you need	When needed
Supabase or Neon	Empty PostgreSQL database with matching direct and pooled owner URLs	Before init
Supabase Auth or Better Auth	Supabase project/API keys, or a same-origin Better Auth URL and signing secret; init provisions its isolated `authn` credential	During init
Object storage	Supabase API keys, or operator-provisioned Neon/AWS buckets and credentials	When storage is enabled; Simple defaults to Supabase Storage with Supabase Auth, otherwise disabled
Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, or Paddle	Test/sandbox credentials and catalogue bindings for the installation-wide provider	Before billing tests; Simple defaults to Stripe test mode without keys
OpenRouter or direct OpenAI / Anthropic / Google AI	Credentials for the configured chat and embedding transport	Before AI/RAG tests
Brevo or Mailjet	Provider keys and a verified sender	Before inbox sign-in and transactional email tests; Simple uses non-delivering `noop`
Cloudflare Turnstile	Bot-protection keys for the configured origin	When enabling protected public forms
Upstash Redis	REST URL and token for shared rate limits	For shared production counters; the wizard also offers constrained single-process memory limits or development-only setup

Local tooling

Make sure these are installed:

Node.js 24.18.1 LTS with Corepack — verify with node --version; the repository selects pnpm 11.20.0
Activate .nvmrc before installation: nvm install then nvm use on macOS/Linux; nvm install 24.18.1 then nvm use 24.18.1 with nvm-windows. Run corepack enable and check pnpm --version in the repository.
git — to clone the repository
A code editor — VS Code works great, the project ships with reasonable defaults
Your selected payment provider's webhook tooling or dashboard; the Stripe CLI is useful only when Stripe is selected
Docker with its engine running for pnpm run qa:local:gate and other disposable local database profiles; it is not required to initialize a hosted database

Information to prepare ahead of time

The init wizard will ask you for these. Decide them now so the install does not stall:

An app name and a short description (one sentence)
Your production URL (you can change it later — for now http://localhost:3777 is fine if you do not have one)
An admin email — the address that should get super-admin access to /admin-dashboard
A contact email and a support email (can be the same)
A choice of business model: B2C (individuals) or B2B (workspaces with teams). Choose for the intended product; changing the flag later does not migrate existing Accounts.
A choice of billing model: subscription, one_time (licenses), or hybrid.
One database provider (Supabase or Neon), one Auth provider (Supabase Auth or Better Auth), and one payment provider (Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, or Paddle). These choices are deployment-wide; do not plan a per-customer selector or an in-place provider switch.

You are ready when…

You have the direct and pooled owner URLs for one fresh database, plus the selected Auth/Storage inputs
node --version prints v24.18.1
pnpm --version prints 11.20.0 in the repository after enabling Corepack
You know your admin email and the business model you want to start with