Start guide

This guide takes you from a new By Dawn account to your first finished ticket. You’ll create a project, connect the repo your code lives in, give an agent somewhere to run, then write a ticket and follow the agent as it plans the work, builds it and opens a pull request for you to review. It takes about fifteen minutes, most of it the agent’s.

If you haven’t signed in yet, start with Sign in. For the words By Dawn uses, see Concepts.

How it works

In By Dawn, you describe the work and an agent does it. Each ticket runs as a mission: the agent plans first and asks you to approve the plan, then builds it in its own copy of your repo, then opens a pull request. It stops to ask whenever a step needs a person, and you answer from the ticket or your Inbox.

1. Set up your workspace

The first time you open By Dawn, Set up your workspace walks you through these steps. Choose Let’s set it up. If you skipped it, reopen it from the account menu (your initials, at the top right) with Setup guide.

The setup guide is for whoever creates the organization, or its admins. If you were invited, your team has done this already: go to Write your first ticket.

1. Create your first project. A project is one board of work. Give it a Project name and, if you like, a Description. Choose Coding project if its tickets change code, which is what this guide covers. Then choose Create project.

   By Dawn gives the project a short prefix for its tickets’ IDs, such as SAW in SAW-123.

2. Add repositories. Agents work in your repos, so a coding project needs at least one. Choose where your code is hosted: GitHub, Azure DevOps or Other git host, then pick the repos this project’s tickets touch. Connecting GitHub installs By Dawn’s GitHub app, which only an owner of your GitHub organization can do. If that isn’t you, By Dawn gives you a link to send to one. Starting from nothing? Choose Starting fresh — no repo yet, and By Dawn can create one on GitHub for you.

3. How you work. The defaults are fine to start with. Plan in cycles turns on time-boxed cycles, which you can change later in Settings›, then This project. How tickets start picks how a ticket’s mission starts, and you can still choose differently on each ticket.

4. Agents: where tickets run. An agent needs a computer to run on. See the next section.

5. Invite your team, by email, if you want company. You can do it later too.

6. Create your first ticket (in the desktop app, Queue your first ticket), or skip it and follow step 3 below.

After the guide, a Getting started list in the sidebar tracks what’s left: Add a repo, Pair a machine, Start a first mission, Turn on cycles and Invite a teammate.

2. Give agents somewhere to run

Agents run Claude Code, on a computer you choose, with that computer’s Claude sign-in. By Dawn never holds your Claude sign-in itself.

• In the desktop app, there’s nothing to set up: tickets run on your computer, each in its own copy of the repo. The computer needs Claude Code signed in. See Download By Dawn.
• In the web app, pair a machine: your laptop, a workstation or a server. Choose Pair a machine in the guide, or Pair a machine in Getting started and then Add remote agent, and follow the steps in Pair a machine. The last step signs the machine in to Claude.

Until a machine is online, tickets wait in line. Nothing is lost.

3. Write your first ticket

On the board, type into What do you want to build? at the bottom and press ↵. A sentence is enough to start. ⌘N jumps there from anywhere (⌘⌥N in the web app), and a column’s + does the same for that column. For more room, choose Advanced ›, which opens the full composer:

• the title, and a description: acceptance criteria, links and anything the agent should know
• Status, Priority, Epic, Cycle, Labels, Estimate and Assignee

Then choose Create ticket, or press ⌘↵. The ticket lands in the first column, usually Backlog, or in the column whose + you chose.

A ticket goes to the current project, and to its repo if it has only one. With several repos, the agent works out which ones the ticket needs.

4. Start the agent

Open the ticket. Before it starts, the ticket shows how its mission will run. Choose how it starts:

Choice	The agent
Plan + build	writes a plan, asks you to approve it, then builds it. The first default; after that, By Dawn starts on the one you used last
Plan first	writes a plan and stops, so you start the build yourself
Build now	builds straight away, without a plan to approve

Below that, a preset decides how thorough the mission is (Auto, Quick, Standard or Thorough), and the line under the start button says how many steps it will run and how many will wait for you. Then choose the start button: Start plan + build, Start planning or Start building.

The card moves to the building column (Building or Running, depending on your board), and the ticket’s Feed shows the agent at work. The other tabs let you watch it in more detail: Terminal, Browser, Code and Changes. You can also drag a card onto the building column to start it.

See Start a ticket for every choice on the way, and Missions and templates for what a mission is made of.

5. Approve the plan

When the plan is ready, the ticket shows Approve the plan and the Inbox shows Review plan. Read the plan on the ticket, then:

• Approve plan to let the agent build it,
• Request changes to say what should change and Send back, or
• Reject to stop.

If the agent has a question on the way, the feed shows it marked Needs you. Choose Answer to reply. See Checkpoints and debriefs for every kind of stop.

6. Review the pull request

When the agent finishes, it opens a pull request and the card moves to Review. Open the Changes tab to read the code. The pull request’s header has Comment, where you can also approve, and, for org admins, Merge. You can also review on GitHub as usual. See Pull requests.

Once the pull request is merged, By Dawn moves the card to the done column. That’s your first ticket finished.

FAQ

Do I need the desktop app?

No. In the web app, a paired machine runs your agents. The desktop app lets your own computer run them too, without pairing. See Download By Dawn.

My ticket won't start. Why?

Usually because no machine is online. The card says No machine online to run this or Waiting for your machine — it is offline. The ticket waits in line and starts on its own as soon as a machine comes online, so turn the machine on, or pair one.

Can I use By Dawn for work that isn't code?

Yes. Choose Not a coding project when you create the project. It gets a board for research, docs, planning or design, with no repos.

Does every ticket need a plan?

No. Build now skips it. Plans pay off on bigger tickets, where it’s cheaper to fix the approach before the code is written.

Next

• Concepts: projects, tickets, missions and agents, and how they fit together.
• Inbox: where the agent asks for you.
• Keyboard shortcuts: get around faster.