# Quickstart

Go from sign-up to a live, publicly showcased app in about ten minutes. This guide deploys a prebuilt container image; [deploying from Git](/docs/apps/deploy-from-git) works the same way from a repository instead. [Deploying with AI](/docs/apps/deploy-with-ai) (Coming soon) will join the same flow.

You'll need a public container image that listens on a port — something like `ghcr.io/you/app:latest`. No credit card required.

## 1. Sign up

Sign up with your email or a Google account. Your login identifies you across every account you'll ever belong to — see [Introduction](/docs/get-started/introduction) for how accounts, apps, and services fit together.

## 2. Claim your handle

Pick your handle. It's your public identity on Koo: your [profile](/docs/showcase/your-profile) lives at `koo.io/@handle`, and every app you showcase lives under it.

Handles are unique and claimed on a first-come basis.

## 3. Create your first app

Choose what to deploy. Pick **container image** as the source, name your app, and optionally tick the free Postgres and free Redis to add them alongside your web service.

> **Note:**
>
> The free Postgres and Redis aren't a trial. Your first ([primary](/docs/get-started/free-tier)) account includes one web service, one Postgres, and one Redis — each 0.5 vCPU / 1 GiB — free forever, no card. See [Free tier](/docs/get-started/free-tier) for how the allowance works when you resize.

## 4. Verify your phone

Koo requires MFA for every account. Verify your phone with a one-time code (SMS, or a voice call if you prefer), then save your recovery codes.

> **Warning:**
>
> Recovery codes are shown once, at this step only. Store them somewhere safe — if you lose both your phone and your recovery codes, account recovery goes through [support](https://koo.io/support) with manual identity verification.

Once verified, the console unlocks.

## 5. Deploy

Paste your image reference and the port your server listens on:

```text
Image  ghcr.io/you/app:latest
Port   8080
```

The image must be publicly pullable. Koo snapshots it as an immutable deployment and ships it — see [Deploy a container](/docs/apps/deploy-a-container) for registries, tags, and private images.

## 6. Watch the deploy timeline

Every deployment streams an ordered timeline as it moves through the pipeline:

1. 
2. 
3.

`ready` means the image was applied, not that your app is healthy — after `ready`, the service's live [status](/docs/observability/status) takes over and walks from not healthy to healthy as your container boots.

## 7. Visit your live URL

Your web service gets a public HTTPS URL, shown on the service in the console:

```bash
curl -i https://<your-service-url>
```

## 8. Tail your logs

Open the service's **Logs** to watch your app's output live — useful right now if step 7 didn't return what you expected. See [Logs](/docs/observability/logs).

## 9. Talk to your free Postgres or Redis (optional)

If you ticked them in step 3, the connection details are already injected into your web service as environment variables — `DATABASE_URL` for [Postgres](/docs/data/postgres), `REDIS_URL` for [Redis](/docs/data/redis). Your code reads them like any other env var; see [Environment and secrets](/docs/configuration/env-and-secrets).

## 10. Show the world

Your app has a public page at `koo.io/@handle/app-slug` — description, links, media, comments, and upvotes. Polish it up and it can surface in [discovery](/docs/showcase/discovery-and-community), where other builders can find and follow your work. See [App pages](/docs/showcase/app-pages).

## Next steps

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