Getting started

Before you begin

You need a LiveContext account, on the cloud or on a self-hosted Community Edition (CE) instance. The tutorial takes about ten minutes and needs no connected app. It uses one AI step, which spends a few credits.

Sign up and onboarding

Visiting any app page while signed out sends you to log in, then back to the page you asked for. After you sign in, LiveContext routes you through onboarding if you have not finished or skipped it yet, or if your email is not verified. Whether you complete it or skip it, you end up in chat.

Cloud: verify your email, then three short steps

The email code expires after 10 minutes and allows 3 attempts. Resend Code becomes available again after 60 seconds, up to 5 codes per hour. If the code went to the wrong address, use Not your address? Sign out.

Display name rules

What you see when you arrive

On the cloud, when there is product news to show, the What's new panel opens once over the chat. It also appears when you skipped the questions, but not when onboarding sends you back to the pricing page or a partner offer. Close it with Got it: it does not come back, and past updates stay on the changelog page.

Every account starts on the Free plan, which gives you 1,000 monthly credits. They pay for workflow runs, and for chat and agent turns on the models marked Free. They refill automatically every month, counted from the day you signed up, and no card is needed. Web search and fetch use pay-as-you-go credits, which a top-up or a reward adds. Other models and generation need a paid plan: top-ups and rewards never unlock them. See Plans & billing.

The chat itself opens empty, with Orbi's greeting and five suggestions under the composer (for example Keep track of my follow-ups). On the cloud they follow the goal you chose during onboarding; on a self-hosted install they are five ideas that need no web search. None of them needs a connected account, and together they show a mix of what Orbi makes, such as an answer, a table, an application, a workflow or an agent. A suggestion fills the composer with a detailed request but does not send it, so you can edit it first.

The Get set up checklist

The sidebar shows a Get set up card, which goes away once every task is complete. Most accounts see four tasks, and each one ticks itself as soon as it is done, wherever you did it:

For its first 30 days, a new cloud account sees six tasks instead, and each one earns credits: Answer the welcome questions comes first, and Create an agent or a workflow is split into Create an agent and Create or install an application. A task then ticks once you were paid for it, so only what you did yourself counts. The credits, 1,000 in all with a bonus for finishing every step, land in your pay-as-you-go bucket. They pay for web search and other pay-as-you-go use, but do not unlock other models.

Each open task links to the place where you do it. When the sidebar is collapsed, the card shrinks to a counter such as 2/4.

Self-hosted (CE): the setup wizard

A Community Edition instance has no email code. The first time an administrator signs in to an instance that is not set up yet, a 5-step setup wizard opens. Users who are not administrators go straight to chat.

Skip for now at the top of the wizard ends it at once, and warns you if no AI source is configured yet. See Self-hosting for what each step unlocks.

Tutorial: your first workflow

You will build a three-step workflow: a manual trigger, an AI step that writes three focus tips, and a step that saves them to a table. You do not need to know any node types or syntax.

1. 1
   Open a new chat

   In the sidebar, choose Home. The composer at the bottom reads Message Orbi....
   Result: an empty conversation with Orbi's greeting.
2. 2
   Describe the job

   Type the request below, then press Enter:

   Your messageCopy

   Build a workflow I can start manually. An AI step writes three short tips for staying focused at work. Then save the tips, with today's date, as a new row in a table called Focus tips.

   Result: Orbi starts working. Each action appears as a tool card in the thread, and the workflow appears as a diagram block with a trigger, an AI step, and a table step. If the Focus tips table does not exist yet, Orbi creates it as part of the build.
3. 3
   Open the workflow

   Click the diagram block (or choose Open in its menu).
   Result: the workflow opens in the side panel, next to the conversation, with its nodes connected left to right. Click a node to see its settings.
4. 4
   Refine it in plain language

   Ask for a change the way you would ask a teammate, for example “Make it five tips instead of three.”
   Result: Orbi edits the existing workflow instead of starting over, and tells you what it changed. The diagram updates.
5. 5
   Run it

   Ask “Run it.” You can also use the Run button in the workflow toolbar.
   Result: a run trace appears, step by step, with each node's output. If a step fails, the trace shows which one and why. Ask “Why did that fail?” and Orbi reads the run and proposes a fix.
6. 6
   Check the result

   Open Tables in the sidebar, then the Focus tips table.
   Result: one new row holds the tips and the date. Every run is also recorded, so you can reopen it later and inspect each node's inputs and outputs.
7. 7
   Save a version and set it as production

   In the workflow panel, click Save, open Version History, and choose Set as production on the version you just saved.
   Result: the version is tagged production and the workflow is live. Later edits do not change what runs until you set a newer version as production, so when you add a schedule or a webhook, save again and move production to that version.

How data moves between steps

Connecting two steps sets their order. It does not pass data. To use an earlier step's result, a step references it with a template expression of the form {{type:label.output.field}}: type is the kind of node (such as trigger, agent, mcp for an integration, or core), label is the step's name, and field is the piece of output you want.

{{agent:write_tips.output.response}}
{{trigger:contact_form.output.email}}

The first reads the text an AI step named “Write tips” generated. The second reads the email field a visitor submitted to a form trigger named “Contact form”. Expressions are resolved when the step runs, and a step can only read steps that ran before it on its path. A reference to a step that has not run resolves to an empty value. See Expressions & variables for the full syntax.

Troubleshooting

Related pages