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Getting started

This guide walks you through creating your first project in Ptah, from account creation to a live demo URL. It takes about 30 minutes, most of which is waiting for Claude to finish scaffolding the code.

1. Create an account

Sign up at app.byptah.com. During sign-up you will be asked to create an organization. The organization is the tenant boundary for all your projects, members, VPS workers, rate cards, and templates.

Every account you invite later will join this organization by default. You can switch between organizations from the account menu if you belong to more than one.

2. Complete your profile

Fill in your full name, role, and optional avatar. Your role is used to scope which parts of the workspace you see first — a BA lands on the requirements panel, a PM on the project overview, and a Tech Lead on the code workspace.

3. Connect a VPS

Ptah needs a VPS to run Claude sessions and host the demo application. Click VPS → Add VPS and follow the setup wizard:

  1. Enter the VPS IP address and an SSH user with sudo rights.
  2. Upload the SSH key or let Ptah generate one and show you the public key to install manually.
  3. Ptah connects to the VPS, runs the install script, and verifies that Docker, Nginx, Certbot, Git, and Claude Code CLI are all available.
  4. The Ptah Agent starts and registers itself with the Ptah Cloud. You should see a green status indicator next to the VPS within a minute.

See VPS setup for a detailed walkthrough and troubleshooting tips.

4. Create your first project

Click Projects → New project. Fill in the project name, project code (used as the subdomain for the demo URL), and the client name. Pick a tech stack from the catalog or define your own.

Upload any reference material you have: the client's RFP, existing wireframes, a screenshot of a competitor, a one-page brief. Ptah stores everything in S3 and makes the files available to Claude in its context window.

5. Start the BA session

Open the project and click Chat with Claude. Claude greets you and asks about the project goals. Walk through the requirements, paste the client brief, and answer Claude's clarifying questions. As you chat, Claude writes the output to files in the project workspace:

  • docs/specs/<module>.md — specifications per module
  • docs/wbs.md — a draft WBS
  • docs/schema.md — a proposed database schema
  • docs/flows/<name>.mermaid — user flow diagrams

You can edit these files directly or ask Claude to revise them.

6. Generate the demo

When the BA is satisfied with the spec, switch to the Tech Lead view and ask Claude to implement the MVP. Claude scaffolds the backend, the frontend, the Docker Compose file, and the Nginx configuration, then deploys the demo to the assigned VPS.

The demo URL appears at the top of the project page when the first deploy succeeds: <project-code>.<org-code>.byptah.com.

7. Export the WBS

Click Generate WBS. Ptah runs the WBS tool against the project spec, produces an Excel workbook with four sheets (module breakdown, summary by module, summary by role, assumptions), and uploads it to the project.

Download the file, adjust the rate card if needed, and send it to your client along with the demo URL.

What next?