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Your first hour

You have an instance running (if not, Self-hosting gets you there). This page is the first hour inside the app: an account, a workspace, and your first real things tracked.

Create your account and workspace​

Open your instance in a browser and register. Signup is open on a development install, which is what the install guide sets up, so the first account is yours. A production install closes signup unless you set PUBLIC_SIGNUP_ENABLED, so if the register page turns you away, that is why. If you put your email in SUPERADMIN_EMAILS during install, this account is also the instance operator. Registering creates your first workspace with it. (If a friend invited you with a premade workspace, yours arrives already configured instead of blank, and you can skip the setup below.)

Take the tour​

On your first visit to the dashboard, a short guided tour appears (once per user, and only while the workspace is still empty). It opens by asking how you want to get around: Top bar runs your modules across the top of the screen, and 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. On desktops the choice follows your account, so signing in elsewhere keeps the layout you set; phones keep their own menu.

The tour then walks you through the main areas one at a time, with a highlight on each and a short note about what it does. Use Next and Back to move through it, or Skip to leave at any point. To see it again later, open the account menu and choose Take the tour.

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​

You don't have to decide on a structure first. Type what you've got into "Add your first thing" (or pair your phone and scan it). 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

If you already know what you want instead, skip the captures and 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. Under the capture box, More ways to start 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. You can also build a workspace from a blueprint file a friend exported: the New workspace dialog takes it directly.

Look at it a few ways​

Whatever you tracked, it's the same data under different lenses. Open a view and flip between the table and the gallery; add a filter and save it as its own view (a "what's low" list, a "still sealed" shelf). Views are cheap; 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, which the install guide set up.
  • 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? Send them a premade workspace and theirs opens already set up, or share a blueprint file they can build a new workspace from.