Create your account

Register the owner

Open the address the installer printed — http://localhost:8080/register by default — and fill in email, name, password and the name of your organization.

The first user of an empty instance owns it. That account needs no email confirmation, so a fresh install works before you have configured any mail server at all.

You land on the dashboard, signed in.

Close public registration

Once your account exists, stop anyone else from signing themselves up. In .env:

KODEL_AUTH_REGISTRATION_ENABLED=false

docker compose up -d server

Caution

Do this after creating the owner, never before. With the flag off, the /register screen shows “Registration is disabled” and no form at all — there is no way to create the first account in the UI.

Add teammates

A fresh install sends no email: messages are only written to the server log. That is a supported way to run Kodel, with one rule — add people as an admin instead of inviting them by email.

npm i -g @kodel-ai/kodelctl
kodelctl auth login --server http://localhost:8080

kodelctl user create dev@example.com --name Dev --generate-password

The command prints a generated password; pass it to the person directly. Accounts created this way are marked verified and can sign in immediately.

Forgotten password, same tool:

kodelctl user set-password dev@example.com --generate-password

Danger

Email invitations do not work without a mail server, and nothing in the UI warns you. The invite token is stored hashed and only ever leaves in the message itself, so a link that was never delivered cannot be recovered afterwards.

To turn email on, set KODEL_MAIL_PROVIDER to resend or smtp with its credentials, set KODEL_AUTH_REQUIRE_EMAIL_VERIFICATION=true, and restart the server container.

Next

Create a project — the container for everything else.