System Initiative Docs

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Setting Up System Initiative ​

This tutorial will walk you through setting up System Initiative. You will be signing up for an account, adding an AWS Credential, configuring a region, configure your AI Agent, and visit your workspace for the first time.

Sign Up ​

To use System Initiative, you need to sign up for an account. To sign up, you need to provide an email or use GitHub or Google authentication.

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If you sign up with Google or GitHub, then you won't need to validate your email or provide a password.

Password (email only) ​

Provide a password:

Email Validation (email only) ​

We will then send you an email to you from info@systeminit.com, asking you to validate your address. Click the 'Verify Your Account' button.

Verify your Email

You will then be presented with our:

T&C

You must agree to our terms before you can continue setting up System Initiative by clicking 'I have read and agree to the terms above', then 'Agree & Continue'.

Profile Information ​

We will then ask for some personal information:

  • First & Last Name: your legal name.
  • Nickname: the name you want us to refer to you as throughout the application.
  • Discord Username: we use Discord extensively to communicate with our community and provide support - this is optional!
  • GitHub Username: we use your GitHub username to help us understand our community and contributors - this is optional!

Profile

When you have entered your information, slick 'Save'.

Setting up your workspace ​

A workspace is where the information about your infrastructure is stored, and where you collaborate with other users and AI Agents.

Cloud Provider Setup ​

To have a working workspace, you need to provide information such as credentials to an underlying cloud provider to securely discover, manage, and automate your infrastructure. No changes are made to the underlying infrastructure without your explicit approval.

Credentials and Region AWS

Credentials ​

We ask for an AWS access key ID, secret access key, and a session token. We recommend you generate a token specifically for use with System Initiative in order to explore the product with a time-bound expiration, and move to using an Assume Role Policy for long term use.

If you have root account credentials, we recommend generating a shorter-lived token:

  1. Follow the instructions to get started with the AWS CLI, and set it up to access your account
  2. Use the aws sts get-session-token command to generate a valid token.
  3. Paste the resulting AccessKeyId, SecretAccessKey, and SessionToken into System Initiative.

We recommend setting a 24 hour (86400 second) expiration on your tokens. This will ensure that the credentials will expire automatically without further intervention. For more information about how we encrypt and store your credentials, read about our secrets subsystem

If you authenticate to AWS using SSO Federation, you can get a short-lived session token from your portal.

Region ​

Select a region to get started by default.

Connect the AI Agent ​

Agent Setup

System Initiative is an AI Native Infrastructure Automation platform. Using the AI Agent allows you to work on your infrastructure automation in natural language.

Our AI Agent is built on a customized version of Claude Code. Follow these steps to configure it:

Install NodeJS 18+ ​

Ensure you have NodeJS 18+ installed.

Install Docker ​

You must have Docker installed to run the SI Agent.

Open a terminal window ​

The AI Agent runs in a terminal window, not within your web browser.

Termina

Install Claude Code ​

bash
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

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Claude Code will require you to have an account with Antrhopic. System Initiative does not mark up your token usage, and is not responsible for your consumption.

Set up the AI Agent ​

You will run Claude Code from a repository that pre-configures it to work well with System Initiative.

bash
git clone https://github.com/systeminit/si-ai-agent.git

Then run the setup script:

bash
./setup.sh

This script will ensure all the previous setup steps were successful, and then prompt you for an API token. Copy and paste this from your workspace setup screen into the setup script.

Run the AI Agent ​

In your terminal, type:

bash
claude

Claude

This will start the AI Agent in your terminal, and connect it to System Initiative.

Finish ​

Click the 'Get Started' button to finish setting up System Initiative!

In this tutorial, you learned:

  • How to Sign up to System Initiative
  • Where to find our terms and conditions
  • How to configure your workspace
  • How to set up the AI Agent

Dive Deeper ​

  • Users: learn more about how to manage your user profile and API tokens.
  • Workspaces: learn more about how workspaces enable isolation, and how to manage them.
  • Secrets: learn more about how System Initiative handles secrets
  • AI Agent: learn more about how our AI Agent works
  • Authenticating with AWS: more details about how to authenticate with AWS