From onboarding to first Loop

This is the onboarding guide for teams that want to move from setup into real execution quickly.

Outcome

By the end of this guide you should have:

• a connected repository to ClosedLoop
• ClosedLoop's Desktop app downloaded, running, and connected to ClosedLoop web
• a usable compute target for executing jobs or "Loops" within ClosedLoop
• one scoped artifact (e.g. PRD) to execute against
• a first Loop run that produces a reviewable artifact

Step 1: Onboarding

• Create an account or sign in.
• Create your Organization.
• Download the ClosedLoop Desktop app.
• Confirm the ClosedLoop Desktop app is connected to the ClosedLoop web app by returning to the onboarding flow and seeing "Running" as the status.
• Create a team name - this may be a subset of your team that typically works together or it may be your full team.
• Create a project.
• Connect your GitHub account that has access to the repo you want to work in.
• Install & Authorize ClosedLoop.ai.
• Land on 'My Tasks' in ClosedLoop to either complete your setup, invite your teammates, or get started with creating your first artifact!

Step 2: Confirm all apps are connected & updated

Web connection to Desktop app

• Confirm in the bottom left corner, above your name, a compute target is visible in the web app. The desktop client registers itself via POST /compute-targets/register and heartbeats every 30 seconds. If you have setup the desktop app correctly, your compute target should look something like "Compute: <your-computer's-name>".

Desktop connection & version

• Return to the desktop app.
• Confirm the status under the app title reports Healthy.
• Confirm you have the latest version of the desktop app. If you don't, you will see a banner near the top of the app that says "A new version is available...". If you see this banner, click 'Update & Restart' to update to the latest version and restarting the app after the update. You may need to confirm the app does complete quitting and restarting.

Capabilities & System Check

If the task depends on a specific provider — Claude, Codex, or a specific plugin version — verify that the target's reported capabilities include it.

• Navigate to Settings (click on your name in the bottom left) > Integrations
• Under the 'Local Compute Targets' section, you'll see a 'System Check' section
• A system check should automatically kick off once you land on this page.
  • If it doesn't, click 'Re-check' to kick off a new system check.
• Once the system check completes, confirm you do not have any failures within the 'Required' section.
  • Follow included instructions to resolve failures if any exist.

Step 3: Choose a smaller first task to test

Avoid broad feature work on the first run. The point is to prove the end-to-end path. Use a narrow task such as:

• small docs updates
• targeted UI copy refinements
• a focused bug fix
• an isolated workflow improvement

Step 4: Launch the first loop

• Navigate to your team name in the left navigation pane > Projects > your project
• Click 'Actions' in the top right corner
• Choose 'Create PRD'
  • Enter a title and select an Approver if you've already invited other teammates to your organization and project.
  • Confirm the repository. Once you've selected a repo, the list of available target branches will auto-populate.
  • The status will stay in 'Draft'.
  • Give ClosedLoop AI an idea of what it will be building. You can do this by:
    • entering a description of the task in the 'Content' text area,
    • pasting the PRD or description into the Content text area, or
    • upload an .md file of an existing PRD or description of the task you want to execute.
  • ClosedLoop AI will already be looking at a summary of the selected repo's codebase to produce a brownfield, relevant PRD. However, if there is additional information you would like it to consider, for example, a website that pulls from more repos than the one you've selected, or a linkable vision document, you can paste that URL in the 'Source URL' field.
• Select 'Save' if you are uploading or pasting in an already existing PRD, or 'Generate PRD' if you want ClosedLoop AI to produce a PRD artifact based on the Content you've entered.
• If you selected to 'Generate PRD', congratulations! You've kicked off your first Loop!

Behind the scenes, the web app sends a desktop.command envelope over the relay. The desktop client dispatches it into the localhost gateway, which may require your approval.

Step 5: Watch the Loop run

• If you kicked off your first loop, you should now see a banner pop in near the top of the project page that says "1 loop running" with a spinner to the left.
• You should also see the title of the PRD you created in the list of project artifacts. Click on that artifact to open it.
• At the top of the screen, you will see a banner that says, "<Your Name> is generating..." with a link on the right that says 'View loop'. Click on that link to view the details of the Loop you're currently running and watch it in action.

Step 6: Review like a system owner

After the loop completes, click on the Artifact link below the two rows of cards and the 2 lines of details to navigate back to the artifact.

• compare output to the original task's description
• check whether the task stayed in scope
• decide whether the result should be accepted, refined, or regenerated

Step 7: Evaluate

To make evaluating the output easier, we've included judges that will evaluate any artifact. If you want to evaluate the PRD that was produced:

• Click 'Actions'
• Click 'Evaluate PRD' (you've just kicked off your 2nd loop!)
• Once the loop completes, navigate to the bottom of the artifact and click to expand the 'Agent Evaluation' section.
• Read the judge report summaries — they score each output dimension against the intent

This PRD will be the input for the next artifact you might want to generate, an Implementation Plan or just Plan.