Cloud onboarding

This journey walks from demo request to a production-ready Cloud org with one working agent. The result is an org where your team can sign in, pick a working agent, and ask it something useful — nothing fancy yet, just the foundation everything else builds on.

You need a working email address and the ability to verify it. The walk assumes no prior Tale knowledge; if anything below references a concept you have not met, the linked page introduces it. Once your instance is ready, the hands-on part takes under an hour — about half of it in the provider step, the rest mostly clicks.

Before you begin

Pin down three things:

• An email address for the first Owner of the org. This account will hold the highest role; pick someone who will not leave the team next week.
• API credentials for at least one model provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, or a compatible local). The provider's portal shows where these live.
• The region you want your data pinned to. Cloud offers Switzerland and the EU; the choice is part of the instance setup, and switching later is a real migration.

From demo request to a working agent

1. 1

   Request your instance

   Tale Cloud is not self-serve — every Cloud org runs on its own instance, set up for you by the Tale team. Fill in the demo request form at tale.dev/request-demo; name and email are enough, though your company and a line on what your agents should do help the team tailor the setup. The team then sets up your own demo instance — a dedicated environment, not a shared trial — and gets back to you when it is ready.

2. 2

   Create your organization

   Open your instance and sign up. The form asks for your name, email, and a password; verify the email link when it arrives. The next screen asks for the Organization name — the display name your team will see in the corner of every page. Pick something that survives a rebrand.

   

   The first user becomes the org's Owner automatically. You can see your role in the Members section under Settings > Organization later if you forget.

3. 3

   Invite the first admin

   Open Settings > Organization, scroll to the Members section, and click Add member. Enter the admin's name and email, assign the Admin role, and set a password — Tale creates the account directly and shows the sign-in credentials once, so save them and relay them to the new admin out of band (there is no invite email). They land in the org with the role you assigned. The "at least 2 Admins" safety rule means an org cannot accidentally lock itself out by removing its only Admin — add a second admin before doing anything that requires it.

   For the role matrix (who can do what), see Members and roles.

4. 4

   Add a model provider

   Open Settings > AI providers and click Add provider. Pick the provider you have credentials for and paste the API key. Save. Tale validates the key in the background; a confirmation on the provider row means the key works. If validation fails, the row shows the error verbatim — the most common cause is whitespace around the key.

   

5. 5

   Publish your first agent

   Open Agents and click Create agent. Pick the model you just added. Write a one-paragraph instructions block — the voice the agent should answer in, the domain it knows, the cases it refuses. Save. Flip Visible in chat on. The agent is now reachable from any chat in the org.

   For a deeper walk on what makes an agent good, see Create an agent.

6. 6

   Open chat

   Click New chat in the sidebar. Pick the agent from the picker, type a question the agent's domain covers, send.

   Three follow-ups worth doing now while everything is fresh:

   • Open Settings > Branding and upload the org logo.
   • Set the org's default language under Settings > Organization.
   • Skim Trust and compliance so you know what to show an auditor before one asks.

Troubleshooting

• Invite email never arrives. Check the invitee's spam folder. Tale sends from noreply@tale.dev; some corporate filters quarantine it.
• Provider validation fails with "invalid key". Re-copy the key from the provider portal — copying often grabs a leading or trailing space.
• Agent does not show in the chat picker. Confirm Visible in chat is on for the agent.

Where this gets used

You now have an org with one working agent and one admin besides yourself. The natural next walk is Build your first agent end to end — same shape, but builds an agent that does real domain work with knowledge bindings. If you came here to evaluate Cloud against self-hosted, Migrate to self-hosted is the reverse walk.