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Quick start

1. Explore the demo​

No install needed: open the live demo in your browser. It runs a simulated city right in the page. For the full app, with the terminal, database manager, alerts and AI agents, run:

npx gridcity demo

Open the printed link. You are above a city of eight districts. Try this:

  1. Click a tower. The camera flies to it and its panel opens: CPU, memory, disks, network, uptime, the services found on it and who it talks to.
  2. Press Tab to visit the next server, Esc to return to the overview.
  3. Press T for time travel. Press ◀ incident to jump to the last outage and watch the city as it was.
  4. Press D for the Doctor: the likely root cause of everything failing right now.
  5. Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac). Every action is in this palette.

Drag to move across the city at the same zoom, right-drag to orbit, scroll to zoom.

2. Start with your own servers​

Stop the demo and start with your own servers:

npx gridcity stop
npx gridcity

Both run in the background, so you can close the terminal; gridcity status shows the link again.

The city is empty. Choose Connect a server.

3. Connect your first server​

  1. Pick where the server is (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, your own…) and type its address, for example ubuntu@203.0.113.10.
  2. Trust: compare the fingerprint the app shows with your provider's console, and confirm.
  3. Key: pick a key from your ssh-agent or ~/.ssh, upload the .pem/.ppk your provider gave you, or let the app create one.
  4. If the server does not accept the key yet, enter its password once: the app installs your public key and forgets the password.

The tower lights up within seconds. Details in Connect a server.

4. Add a database, a bucket or a website​

Ctrl+K → Connect a database, bucket, probe or balancer… Paste the host, user and password, press Test connection. If it fails, the Doctor explains why and offers a proven fix. Then Add to the city. See Connect databases and more.

5. Connect your AI​

npx gridcity mcp

Paste the printed command into your terminal to connect Claude Code, then ask it "why is the site down?". See AI agents.