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Your first hour with Sencai

This is one concrete path through Sencai’s core setup, start to finish. It won’t cover every feature, but by the end you’ll have a working organization with a teammate, a connected resource, and notifications set up - the foundation everything else builds on.

What you’ll need before you start

Section titled “What you’ll need before you start”
  • An email address to sign up with (or a Google/Microsoft account, if your company uses one of those for sign-in).
  • For the cloud path: credentials from a cloud provider account you control - for example an API token from Hetzner, or an IAM access key from AWS. You don’t need this if you’re starting with the fleet agent instead.
  • For the fleet agent path: a Linux server (cloud, on-prem, or bare metal) you have shell access to. You don’t need a cloud account for this at all.
  • A teammate’s email address, if you want to invite someone along the way.

You don’t need both the cloud path and the fleet-agent path - either one is a valid way to get your first resource into Sencai, and you can always add the other later.

1. Sign in

Section titled “1. Sign in”

Go to app.sencai.space and sign in, or create your account if this is your first visit. See Create your account for the full sign-up and sign-in flow, including what happens if a teammate invited you instead of you signing up on your own.

2. Create or join an organization

Section titled “2. Create or join an organization”

Every Sencai user works inside an organization - the shared workspace that owns your cloud instances, fleet agents, billing, and settings. If you signed up on your own, create one from the dashboard; if you were invited, you’re already a member of one. See Organizations & teams for the full picture, including roles and how invitations work.

3. Invite a teammate

Section titled “3. Invite a teammate”

From your organization’s Members tab, invite a teammate by email and pick a role for them (Owner, Admin, Member, Auditor, or Viewer). They’ll need to accept the invitation before they show up as a member - see Organizations & teams for what a role actually grants. You can skip this step and come back to it later.

4. Connect a cloud account, or enroll a fleet agent

Section titled “4. Connect a cloud account, or enroll a fleet agent”

Pick whichever matches what you have available:

  • Connect a cloud account if you want Sencai to provision and manage cloud infrastructure on your behalf. See Connect a cloud provider for exactly what Sencai needs from your provider account and how to add it.
  • Enroll the fleet agent if you already have a server - cloud, on-prem, or bare metal - and want inventory, patch status, and security scanning for it without connecting a cloud account at all. See Fleet agent enrollment for the install steps.

Most teams eventually use both.

5. Watch your resources appear

Section titled “5. Watch your resources appear”

Once a cloud account is connected, Sencai can discover and import existing infrastructure on it, and you can provision new instances directly - see Provision & manage instances. Once an agent is enrolled, the server shows up in your fleet shortly after its first heartbeat, and Sencai starts reporting on it - see Fleet agent for what it reports and how monitoring works.

Provisioning and discovery are asynchronous - a new instance moves through a tracked in-progress state before it’s ready, rather than appearing instantly. See Core concepts if you want the full mental model before you dig further in.

6. Set up notifications

Section titled “6. Set up notifications”

Decide how you want to hear about things that need attention - new incidents, budget thresholds, failed provisioning actions, and so on. Configure your email preferences and, if your organization uses them, alert channels from your organization’s settings. See Notifications for the available channels and what triggers them.

What’s next

Section titled “What’s next”