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Version: 2026.8.0

Your first hour

You have an instance running (if not, Self-hosting gets you there). This page is the first hour inside the app.

The loop:

  1. Register. On a fresh install the first account is yours.
  2. Take the short guided tour and pick a layout.
  3. Type or scan a few things and let Cobblr build the category around them.
  4. Flip between views, then give things locations.

Create your account and workspace​

Open your instance in a browser and register. Registering creates your first workspace with it.

  • Signup is open on a fresh install set up with the setup builder (its .env says PUBLIC_SIGNUP_ENABLED=true), so the first account is yours.
  • Close signup once your account exists: set that to false and restart if strangers can reach the address.
  • Turned away at the register page? Signup was closed on this instance and you need an invite.
  • The operator account: the email you gave the builder as operator (SUPERADMIN_EMAILS) makes this account the instance operator.
  • Invited to an instance someone else runs? Follow their invite link instead and skip the install entirely.

Take the tour​

On your first visit to the dashboard, a short guided tour appears.

  • Pick how you get around first: Top bar runs your modules across the top of the screen, Full sidebar puts everything in a column down the left. Picking one switches the whole app immediately, so you see the real layout before you commit, and you can change it any time.
  • Next and Back move through the tour, Skip leaves at any point. It walks the main areas one at a time, with a highlight on each and a short note about what it does.
  • See it again later: open the account menu and choose Take the tour.
When the tour appears, and where the layout choice sticks

The tour appears once per user, and only while the workspace is still empty. On desktops the layout choice follows your account, so signing in elsewhere keeps the layout you set, while phones keep their own menu.

Once the tour closes you're on the dashboard. A fresh workspace doesn't ask you to configure anything. It asks what you want to do: just add your first thing and let Cobblr work out the rest, start from a ready-made bundle, or browse every way to start:

A fresh workspace asking what you want to do A fresh workspace asking what you want to do

Capture a few things​

Type what you've got into "Add your first thing" (or pair your phone and scan it). You don't have to decide on a structure first: Cobblr identifies each thing and offers to set up the right home for it:

A typed thing, identified as yarn A typed thing, identified as yarn

Add a few more of the same kind and they line up, each recognized:

Three things added, each identified as yarn Three things added, each identified as yarn

Accept the offer and the category is built with your things already filed into it, fields and all:

The Yarn category, set up and populated from the captures The Yarn category, set up and populated from the captures

Already know what you want? Skip the captures:

  • Start from a bundle: a ready-made setup for a kind of thing (home inventory, a 3D-printer workshop, a yarn stash) that you can reshape afterward.
  • More ways to start, under the capture box, opens the whole catalog in one place, with a single search across all of it: ready-made bundles (one kind of thing, fields already shaped), full setups that wire several modules together, and blank modules you shape yourself.
  • Have a blueprint file a friend exported? The New workspace dialog takes it directly.

Look at it a few ways​

Open a view and flip between the table and the gallery, then add a filter and save it as its own view (a "what's low" list, a "still sealed" shelf). Whatever you tracked, it's the same data under different lenses. Views are cheap, so make ones that match how you look for things.

Give things a place​

Add a few locations that match your space (a room, a shelf, some bins) and set them on your items. Now "where is it" is a filter, not a memory exercise. When you're ready, print a QR label for a bin, stick it on, and a phone scan jumps straight to what's inside.

From here​

  • Scanning from your phone? The camera needs HTTPS. If you took the install guide's plain-HTTP fast path, this is the moment to add it. The Tailscale option takes a few minutes and changes nothing else.
  • Enable more modules as needs appear: projects, purchases, labels. Each turns on per workspace, and nothing you don't enable gets in the way.
  • The Inventory app example shows a complete setup, with screenshots, built from the pieces you just touched.
  • Bringing in a friend? Share a blueprint of your setup and they can build a new workspace from it, or the operator can mint them an invite.