Getting started

This is the shortest path from nothing to a live app: an account, the CLI, a project, a deploy. About ten minutes if nothing goes wrong. It is a tutorial, not a reference — every command here has a fuller page linked at the end.

1. Create your account

Sign up at camplax.dev/app/sign-up with GitHub, Google, or your name, email and a password of at least 8 characters. With email, Camplax sends you a link: click it in the browser you signed up in and you are signed in. Reading the email on another device? It also has a six-digit code to type on the sign-up page instead. Until then the password does not sign in; if the email does not arrive, the page can send a new one. Plans start at $25/month, card required — there is no free tier. Indie covers hosting, a Postgres database, authentication, object storage, deploys, preview deployments, custom domains and environment variables for up to five apps, which share 3 GB of memory that Camplax sizes for you (plans). AI calls draw from prepaid credits, which you can load later under Billing.

2. Get the CLI

The CLI is not published to npm yet, so the camplax commands below work once it is. Until then the console does each step: New project starts from a template or connects a GitHub repository, and Deploys shows every build. An AI agent can do the same through the MCP endpoint. The CLI needs Node 24 or newer.

Check it runs:

camplax help

3. Sign in

camplax login

A browser window opens so you can approve this machine. Approve it and the CLI stores a token in ~/.camplax/config.json. You never paste the token into a file.

For a machine with no browser — CI, a server, an agent — paste a token instead:

camplax login <token>

or set CAMPLAX_TOKEN in the environment. Project API keys are created in the console under Keys, with scopes like deploy or env:read so a leak is limited to one project.

4. Create the project — and, if you want, a starter app

Two different things happen here, and the order confuses everyone once:

1. The project lives on Camplax. Open camplax.dev/app, choose New project, and pick a name. The name becomes the slug in the URL, and provisioning starts — hosting, a Postgres 18 database, authentication and object storage under one slug like my-app.
2. The code lives on your machine. If you are starting from scratch, run camplax create my-app. It scaffolds the starter app locally — a Plax app with Better Auth sign-in, a notes table, a server AI route and its first SQL migrations already wired. It only writes files to your disk; it does not create the Camplax project, which is why the console step comes first.

Already have a repo? Skip create entirely and link it below.

5. Link and deploy

From the folder that holds your code:

camplax link my-app
camplax deploy

link ties the folder to the project (it writes .camplax/link.json). What deploy does next depends on whether a repository is connected:

• No GitHub repo — deploy the folder itself: camplax deploy --local packs this folder (.git, node_modules and .env files are left out; up to 50 MB gzipped) and uploads it as the deploy's source. Plain camplax deploy with nothing connected just tells you to do this.
• A repo is connected: camplax deploy queues a production deploy of it — and a push to the default branch does the same thing (Hosting and deploys).

Watch it finish:

camplax logs

When the deploy reports ready, the app is live at https://my-app.camplax.app. That URL works from the first deploy — https included, nothing to configure.

6. Pull the environment

camplax env pull

This writes the project's environment variables into a local .env — the keys your app reads, with development values where you set them. It never contains the production DATABASE_URL; that is deliberate.

7. Work on it locally

camplax dev

This pulls the project's environment into .env.local and runs your start command. The production database password never lands on your laptop, so a local experiment cannot touch live data; browse and query production through camplax db studio.

8. Put it on your own domain

Two DNS records: add the domain in the console under Domains, point a CNAME at edge.camplax.app, add the _acme-challenge TXT record the domain's sheet shows, and press Verify. The SSL certificate is issued for you. Domains, DNS and SSL has the whole flow, including the root of a domain, where a plain CNAME is not allowed.

Troubleshooting

• camplax doctor checks the folder, the login and the link, in plain English.
• camplax probe runs live write → read → delete checks against the project's real features and prints pass, skip or fail per check.
• camplax rollback puts the previous production build back without rebuilding.

Where next

• How Camplax works — what a project contains and where each piece runs.
• Hosting and deploys — previews, deploy hooks, rollback.
• Environment variables — what env pull and env push actually move.
• Postgres database — connection strings, migrations, a database per preview.
• CLI reference — every command and flag.