Quickstart - Deco CMS

Get Studio running

Create your account (email, GitHub, or Google)
Create an organization — your top-level workspace
You’re in.

Desktop app (recommended for local agents)

The native desktop app lets agents run on your machine — with your files, your tooling, and your existing Claude Code or Codex subscription as the harness. Studio still handles chat, connections, and logging.

 brew tap decocms/studio https://github.com/decocms/studio
brew install --cask deco-studio

macOS (Apple Silicon) for now. See where an agent runs for how local runtimes work.

Want to run the Studio server itself on your own infrastructure? See Self-hosting.

AI provider (already set up for you)

New organizations start with credits on the Deco AI Gateway, so you can begin chatting with agents right away — no setup required.

When you want to use your own keys (Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter, etc.) or check your remaining gateway credit, head to Settings → AI Providers. See AI Providers for the full list.

Start chatting (Decopilot)

You don’t need to build anything to begin. The home screen is a chat composer — “What’s on your mind?” — backed by Decopilot, Studio’s built-in assistant. Type a request and it gets to work, using whatever tools you’ve connected. Each conversation is saved under Decopilot in the left sidebar.

When you’re ready to build a focused, reusable worker, create a dedicated agent.

Create an agent

Use the + / “Browse agents” button in the sidebar to create a new agent. Once it’s open, the screen splits in two:

Left — the chat. Above the input are the model-tier picker and the runtime picker (where the agent runs — cloud or your own machine; see Agents).
Right — a tabbed panel. The Settings tab holds instructions, connections, and files; Automations holds schedules and triggers. Other tabs (Preview, Content, Review changes) appear only for agents backed by a repo or site.

Open the Settings tab and write a one-line instruction describing what this agent should do.

Attach a connection

Connections are the tools your agent can use — GitHub, Slack, Shopify, your database, your own MCP server. You can add them directly from the agent you just created:

In the agent’s right-panel Settings, open the Connections section
Click Add connection
Search the catalog (e.g., Gmail), or pick Custom Connection to add an unlisted MCP server
Click Connect and follow the sign-in or paste-a-key flow
Pick which of the connection’s tools this agent should have

Credentials are encrypted and never exposed to your team. Connections you add this way are stored at the org level — they show up under Settings → Connections and can be attached to other agents too.

You can also start from Settings → Connections and install a connection ahead of time, then attach it to agents later. Same outcome — pick whichever order feels natural.

The catalog is populated by the registries enabled under Settings → Store.

Talk to it

Just type. The agent uses the tools you attached.

 Send an email to [email protected] with a poem about MCP.

Watch the chat run. Each tool call is logged in Settings → Monitor.

You’re set up! From here, set up Automations to run agents on a schedule or event, invite team members, or build more agents.

Next steps

Key concepts — Anatomy of Studio: the agent shell vs. Settings
Agents — How to design and configure agents
Decopilot — The AI assistant built into Studio
Self-hosting — Deploy on Docker Compose or Kubernetes