Onboarding · For first-time developers

From zero to first deploy.
~12 minutes, honest.

This page is the honest version of "how fast can a new developer ship something?". Not the marketing 4-minute number (that's build time, not onboarding). 12 minutes is what we observe from "ran the install command" to "read the docs enough to confidently ship a feature" for someone who has never touched the stack. Your mileage will vary — pair programming with a senior cuts it to ~6 minutes.

Optional · 30 seconds

Quick — help us tailor your getting-started docs.

Three questions so we can route you to the right examples. Totally skippable — if you just want to install, hit the skip button.

Do you have a manual operation running today (something repetitive eating your week)?
How many people on your team?
How urgent is it?

Answer the three to enable Save. Or hit Skip — your call.

The 5 minute-marked steps

  1. 0:00

    Install TheoCode CLI

    Single-line install. Apache-2.0, no account, no telemetry-by-default. Works on macOS, Linux, WSL.

    $ curl -fsSL https://install.usetheo.dev/theo-code | sh
  2. 0:45

    Scaffold a project

    Pick a stack (Node, Go, Python, Rust, Java, Ruby, PHP, Next.js). theo.yaml is generated with sensible defaults, health checks, structured logs, and Dockerfile.

    $ npm create theo@latest my-first-agent
  3. 2:15

    Read your first code

    The scaffold ships with a worked example for your stack. Run it locally first — no Theo runtime needed yet. Read the code, run the tests, edit a route.

    $ cd my-first-agent && theo dev
  4. 5:30

    Deploy to the Starter free tier

    Sign in with GitHub. theo deploy builds a signed image, runs health checks, and gives you a live HTTPS URL. No credit card.

    $ theo login && theo deploy
  5. 12:00

    Find the docs you need

    Read the Plan/Code/Infra mode docs for TheoCode, the deploy/rollback/promote docs for TheoCloud, and the per-stack template README. You now know enough to ship a feature.

Promises while you learn

You will not be auto-charged

The Starter tier is permanently free. No card on file. No upgrade prompts that auto-bill. Cancel anytime — the free tier remains.

You will not lose your code

TheoCreate scaffolds standard repos. theo.yaml is open format. Containers are OCI standard. If you walk away from TheoCloud, your code keeps working — rebuild on any Kubernetes cluster in under a day.

You will not break production

Every deploy is rollback-able with theo rollback. Canary deploys on Pro+. Signed images block deploy on Critical CVEs. You learn the platform safely.

Read the docs

Per-stack templates, Plan/Code/Infra modes for TheoCode, deploy/rollback/promote for TheoCloud.

Ask in Discord

Founders + 200+ developers. Onboarding questions answered within hours during US/BR working time.

Honest disclosure: 12 minutes is the median observed for developers who already know one of the supported stacks (Node, Go, Python, Rust, Java, Ruby, PHP, Next.js). First-time developers on those stacks will need 30-60 minutes — the bottleneck is reading and understanding the scaffold code, not Theo. We don't make claims we can't back up.