~/shelltab — docs/getting-started

Getting Started

From sign-up to a running workspace in under five minutes. No install required.

1. Create your account

Go to shelltab.dev/signup and create a free account. No credit card required. Every feature is available on the free plan during beta.

Once you sign in you land on the onboarding screen, which walks you through creating your organisation and your first drive.

2. Start your first drive

A drive is a persistent Linux environment — your own cloud machine with an NVMe disk, pre-installed tools, and a full shell. It persists between sessions: your files, git repos, installed packages, and environment variables are all still there when you come back.

  1. 01 Name your drive

    Give it a name that reflects the project — e.g. api-backend or infra.

  2. 02 Choose a size

    Free and Plus plans get a Starter drive (1 CPU, 2 GB RAM). Team and Scale plans unlock Standard and Performance sizes.

  3. 03 Click Start

    The drive boots in under two seconds. A terminal tile opens automatically on the canvas.

3. The canvas — what you're looking at

The canvas is a zoomable surface that shows everything happening in your workspace: terminals, file panels, browser previews, AI agent sessions, and more. Each item is a tile that you can drag, resize, minimise, or maximise.

Zoom & pan

Scroll to pan. Pinch or Ctrl+scroll to zoom. The zoom controls in the bottom-right corner let you reset to 100%.

Tile chrome

Every tile has a titlebar with traffic-light buttons: red closes, yellow minimises, green maximises.

Tab mode

Prefer a focused, one-tile-at-a-time view? Switch to Tab Mode using the toggle in the top-right navbar. The canvas and tab strip share the same tiles.

Presence

Coloured avatar rings in the top-right show who else is in the workspace. Click an avatar to jump to that person's active tile.

4. Run your first command

Click anywhere inside the terminal tile to focus it. Type a command and press Enter. You'll see your username appear next to the output block — that's command attribution, ShellTab's built-in record of who ran what.

Every command in ShellTab is attributed to the person or agent that ran it. This creates a readable audit trail without any extra setup.

5. Invite a teammate

Open your organisation settings and send an invite by email. Once they accept, they appear in the workspace immediately — their avatar shows in the navbar and their terminal sessions appear on the canvas.

You don't need to share a link or grant per-session access. Every drive in your organisation is visible to all members by default.

What's next

Workspace Tour → Drives → Canvas & Tab Mode → Multiplayer → AI Agents → Session Recording → Billing & Plans →