Quickstart

Create your account

Go to app.matrix-os.com and sign up with your email or a social provider. Choose your Matrix handle — it becomes your identity across the OS and the Matrix protocol (@handle:matrix-os.com). You do not need a credit card at this step.

Choose compute power and region

Choose a plan and an available region in onboarding. Compare the resources and features shown for each plan against the work you want to run, such as a single coding task or several parallel agents.

See current plans and pricing for the latest options. Before confirming, review the selected plan, billing interval, trial eligibility and total in Checkout. Checkout shows the price you will pay.

Complete billing

If this is your first primary Matrix computer, Checkout offers a 3-day free trial on Starter, Builder, or Max. A card is required, but the order summary shows $0 today, the exact first-charge date, and the selected monthly or annual price that begins after the trial. During this 3-day trial, your saved card is charged when the trial ends unless you cancel before the displayed date; Stripe automatically charges only the selected price shown at Checkout.

Complete Stripe Checkout to save the card. Matrix may begin preparing your selected computer while Checkout is open, but it waits for the signed Stripe subscription webhook before granting access. Returning to the success page does not activate the computer by itself, and the payment-settling state typically resolves in under a minute.

Checkout continues without interruption if early preparation is not available. Matrix automatically starts or resumes provisioning after payment is authorized. You do not need to choose your setup or start provisioning again; onboarding—including browser approval opened by the CLI or Desktop app—moves directly to passive build progress and continues automatically when your computer is ready.

Pick your developer tools

Before provisioning starts, Matrix asks which coding tools you want pre-installed on your computer: Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, and Pi.

Wait for provisioning

Matrix provisions your computer in the cloud and gets it ready. The onboarding screen tracks progress through four stages: creating, booting, registering, and finalizing. After payment, this is a passive progress screen rather than another setup decision. This usually takes a few minutes.

Land in the web shell

When provisioning finishes, Matrix opens the web shell. Open a Terminal tab first — it is the primary surface for the next steps. Canvas, files, preview, and Symphony are available from the sidebar once your developer basics are in place.

Authenticate GitHub

Inside the Terminal tab, run the GitHub CLI login flow. Matrix tunnels the browser callback through your runtime, so you never need to paste a token manually:

gh auth login --hostname github.com --web

Follow the prompts. When asked whether to add an SSH key, let Matrix generate a Matrix-managed key inside the runtime. Only the public key leaves the computer — your laptop private key is never involved.

Clone a repository

mkdir -p ~/projects
cd ~/projects
git clone git@github.com:owner/repo.git

Replace owner/repo with your target repository. If the SSH key was registered successfully in the previous step the clone should complete without a password prompt.