Onboarding & Setup

First-launch onboarding

The first-launch overlay. A brand-styled Welcome → sign-in (GitHub/Google OAuth) → Lift-off flow with an optional alpha invite-code gate and a milestone state machine (qubicBuilt, readyForIcons, completedOnboarding) that reveals features progressively.

MCP tool: orbit_set_onboarding_milestone. Deep dive: context/archive/onboarding-template.md, context/onboarding-vision.md.

Guided Apollo arc

Apollo guides first setup as Orbit’s chat, planning, and co-pilot surface. It can collect project preferences, help shape the first useful prompt, queue approved work, generate and embed icons, and keep onboarding choices available for later handoff.

Deep dive: context/core/apollo-onboarding-planner.md.

Setup details

A few onboarding and project-creation steps are worth knowing about individually:

• Optional connection-gated onboarding — the MCP setup step during first launch can be skipped explicitly rather than forcing a connection before you can continue.
• Existing Memtrace license import — if you already hold a Memtrace license, bring it in during first-run onboarding (or later from the Vault) instead of starting a new one.
• Build history from git — when Orbit discovers an existing project with Git history, it bootstraps visible project history from those commits instead of starting with an empty timeline.
• Optional private GitHub backup — after creating a project, you can choose to create a private GitHub backup for it.
• Configurable per-file project scaffold — the New Project wizard lets you choose and preview which files Orbit creates for a new scaffold, rather than always writing a fixed set.

Connect a Coding Agent (Power Up)

The Icons Ready screen and Settings → Coding Agent. Explains the three execution options (Apollo default / Claude subscription / API key) in plain English with setup instructions; no pressure to switch.

Free trial

The sidebar footer trial banner. A 14-day full-Pro trial bypasses the free-tier limits with welcome copy and a persistent countdown banner. When the trial expires, Orbit enforces the current plan limits and the UI explains which subscription-backed features are unavailable.

Subscription-backed surfaces named in the product registry include Apollo’s Sivants-covered assistant path, mobile/remote access through the Cloudflare Tunnel or equivalent, multi-node remote execution, and Sivants-billed AI spend covered by the subscription cap. Local operations and BYOK usage remain outside Sivants billing gates, but remote/tunnel access is surfaced as affected when the active plan does not include it.