# Quickstart

> Sign up, confirm your email, connect your agent and watch your first task finish on your desk.

This quickstart takes about ten minutes. At the end, an agent on your desk has finished a task and you have seen its result.

## Before you begin

You need:

- An email address you can open.
- An account for the agent you want on your desk, such as a Claude plan for Claude Code or a ChatGPT plan for Codex.
- For the command line steps: a terminal on macOS or Linux. If something the CLI needs is missing, the install line says what and how to add it. On a phone, or without a terminal, use the web page steps: they do everything.

## Step 1: Sign up

Open [the home page](https://maindesk.smaverk.com/) and press **Create account**. Enter your email address and a password, and press **Create account** again.

Your desk opens on the **Tasks** page. A line at the top says `Confirm your email: open the link we sent to <your email>`.

## Step 2: Confirm your email

Open the email from Maindesk and press its link. The page says **Email confirmed**. Press **Open my desk**.

> [!NOTE]
> Until your email is confirmed you can look around, but not start machines or tasks. No email? Press **Send it again** in the line at the top of the page.



## Step 3: Check the plan

Billing is not live yet: nothing is charged. There is nothing to choose yet: go on to the next step. [Plans and desk minutes](/docs/money) says what counts.


## Step 4: Connect your agent

An agent works on your desk in one of two ways. Use either, or both.

**An agent on your desk.** This works from a phone. On the **Tasks** page, under **Sign in your agent**, press the button for the agent you have a plan for, such as **Claude Code, with your Claude plan**. The **Agents** page has the same list. **Set up Claude Code** opens and asks to open Claude Code on your desk: press **Open it**. A terminal on your desk opens with the steps beside it. Follow them and sign in on the agent's own page. The page then says `Signed in. Claude Code … is ready.`

**Your agent on your computer.** In a terminal, in your project folder, run:

```sh
curl -fsSL https://maindesk.smaverk.com/install.sh | sh
maindesk connect
```

`maindesk connect` prints a link. Open it on any device, sign in (or create your account there, if you skipped Step 1), and press **Allow**. The terminal then prints:

```text
connected to https://maindesk.smaverk.com · key md_…
```

Your agent can now run commands, move files and start tasks. [Connect: CLI, MCP and API](/docs/connect) covers MCP and the API.

## Step 5: Start your first task

On the **Tasks** page, type what to do in the box under **What should your agent do?**, for example:

```text
Write a file hello.txt that says hello, then list the folder
```

Under the box, the **Agent** menu shows which agent takes it; once your desk has folders, **Folder** picks where it works. Press **Start**. Or, from the terminal in your connected project folder (the task works in that folder's copy on the desk):

```sh
maindesk send "Write a file hello.txt that says hello, then list the folder"
```

The answer has a link to the task's page. Open it to watch the agent work.

## Step 6: See it done

When the agent finishes, the task's page shows **Done** with a summary of what it did and any files it attached. The Tasks page lists it under done. To wait for it in a terminal:

```sh
maindesk task wait --mine
```

The command ends when the task ends, with a line like `t_… done (completed) · Done: Finished`, and exit code 0. [Tasks](/docs/tasks) lists the other exit codes.

> [!TIP]
> In **Settings**, **Notifications**, turn on **Push to my devices**. Your phone then gets a push when a task starts, needs you or is done.

## Next steps

- [Tasks](/docs/tasks): follow up, answer questions and wait for several tasks
- [Machines](/docs/machines): Windows, the Mac, previews and files
- [Plans and desk minutes](/docs/money): what counts and the daily stop
- [Errors and fixes](/docs/errors): if a step answered with an error