Quickstart - Deco CMS

Get Studio running

There are two ways to start.

Option A — Managed cloud

Create your account (email, GitHub, or Google)
Create an organization — your top-level workspace
You’re in.

Option B — Run locally

 bunx -p decocms deco

This spins up a local instance with embedded PostgreSQL. Fully private — everything stays on your machine. The package is published as decocms ; the binary it ships is deco . Or clone and run from source:

 git clone https://github.com/decocms/studio.git
cd studio
bun install
bun run dev

AI provider (already set up for you)

New organizations start with credits on the Deco AI Gateway, so you can begin chatting with agents right away — no setup required.

When you want to use your own keys (Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter, etc.) or check your remaining gateway credit, head to Settings → AI Providers. See AI Providers for the full list.

Create or open an agent

The sidebar shows your agents. Click an existing one or create a new one from the + button.

When you’re inside an agent, the screen has three parts:

Left — the list of threads (past conversations with this agent)
Center / bottom — the chat input
Right — the agent’s panel: Settings (instructions, connections), Automations, and Git (if linked)

Open the Settings tab on the right and write a one-line instruction describing what this agent should do.

Attach a connection

Connections are the tools your agent can use — GitHub, Slack, Shopify, your database, your own MCP server. You can add them directly from the agent you just created:

In the agent’s right-panel Settings, open the Connections section
Click Add connection
Search the catalog (e.g., Gmail), or pick Custom Connection to add an unlisted MCP server
Click Connect and follow the sign-in or paste-a-key flow
Pick which of the connection’s tools this agent should have

Credentials are encrypted and never exposed to your team. Connections you add this way are stored at the org level — they show up under Settings → Connections and can be attached to other agents too.

You can also start from Settings → Connections and install a connection ahead of time, then attach it to agents later. Same outcome — pick whichever order feels natural.

The catalog is populated by the registries enabled under Settings → Store.

Talk to it

Just type. The agent uses the tools you attached.

 Send an email to [email protected] with a poem about MCP.

Watch the chat run. Each tool call is logged in Settings → Monitor.

You’re set up! From here, set up Automations to run agents on a schedule or event, invite team members, or build more agents.

Next steps

Key concepts — Anatomy of Studio: the agent shell vs. Settings
Agents — How to design and configure agents
Decopilot — The AI assistant built into Studio
Self-hosting — Deploy on Docker Compose or Kubernetes