First-run Setup Assistant

A first-run Setup Assistant now runs the first time you open Dots. It replaces the app with a nine-step wizard titled Set up Dots and hands the app back at the end. The steps are fixed and ordered — license, workspace, agents, plugin, concierge, then three reveals and done — and the progress bar counts them, so the number of remaining steps is always visible.

What The Assistant Walks Through

Setup opens on your license key, which is validated against the hosted authority rather than merely stored: a key that does not check out does not advance the wizard. The key itself never lands in the answers file. The desktop app seals it in operating-system custody, and a browser session seals it in account-bound server custody.

Workspace comes next and provisions your Space and its member Dotabases in a single call. It is idempotent by design — it creates only what is missing, and after a first success the button relabels to Run again, so a half-finished provision gets repaired rather than duplicated. It reports back how much it created and how much was already there.

Detecting The Agents You Already Have

The agents step looks for the three coding agents Dots integrates with — Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor — by resolving each one's binary and then asking it whether you are signed in. Because a desktop app launched from a graphical shell inherits no terminal PATH, the probe also checks the known Windows install locations before giving up, and Cursor gets a second look for the common case of the editor being installed without its command-line tool. If all of that still misses something you know you have, there is a button to say so.

The Plugin Step Is Guided, Not Automatic

The wizard shows you the two commands that add your private marketplace and install the iagreed plugin, then asks you to confirm you ran them. It does not run them for you: an install performed inside your own coding agent is not something the wizard can observe, so the step records your confirmation rather than a detection result. You can also finish setup without the plugin and install it later.

What Happens When A Step Cannot Complete

No step blocks completion. A machine with no coding agent finishes all nine. A failed probe marks that one agent not-detected and renders an install link instead of blocking, and the concierge step offers an install rather than waiting on a run that never starts. The completion gate fails open: when the wizard cannot read its own completion status, it hands over the app rather than holding you in setup. A fault inside setup never withholds access to the workspace.

Where Setup State Lives

Your answers persist outside the browser — in a permissions-restricted file on the desktop, or in server-side state for a browser session. Renderer storage is never the record, so a reinstall reads the same durable state the plugin does. The completion flag is written by the last reveal step rather than the first, which means quitting halfway puts you back in the wizard at the work that still remains.