Your first hour
Set up a cleaning company in the dashboard, then make your first API call with the key it gives you.
We're going to build Sarah's setup for real: Brightside Cleaning, one site in Portland, and a key that can read its customers.
The setup happens in the dashboard — it's a handful of forms, and there's no reason to write code for something you'll do once. Then you get a key, and the key is where your integration starts.
Sign up
An account, and you as its owner.
Make an app
The thing you're building. Mark it for development so you get test keys.
Add Portland
A real site with its own database. It lands in the environment's default group; make your own groups later, once you have sites to organise.
Get a key
A publishable one and a secret one. Choose what it's allowed to do. It can reach every site in the environment until you narrow it.
Read the customer list
Your first API call, and the shape of every one after it.
What you need
For steps 1–4, a browser. For step 5, an HTTP client — no SDK to install, no libraries
required. The examples use curl and JavaScript and translate to anything.
Start in a dev environment
At step 2, leave the environment's production flag off. You'll get keys
starting sk_test_, and nothing you break belongs to a real customer. Production
is a separate environment of the same app — see
Environments.
Where the line is
Worth knowing up front, because it explains the shape of these guides.
Running your business structure — opening sites, issuing keys, adding staff, setting up notifications — happens in the dashboard. It's occasional, it benefits from seeing what you're doing, and it isn't something your product needs to do at runtime.
Working with business data — customers, bookings, invoices, staff schedules — is the API. That's what your app does all day, with the key from step 5.
So you won't find API documentation for creating sites here. You'll find screenshots.
Everything with a curl example is something your key can do.