Quick Start

This guide takes you from zero to your first approval. By the end you'll have a workspace, a base, and you'll have approved an AI-submitted record from the Inbox — the core loop Busabase is built around.

Goal: approve your first record in ~5 minutes. Everything else — connecting agents, the REST API, variants — builds on this one loop.

Before you start

You only need a Busabase Cloud account. There's nothing to install. If you'd rather run locally, the open-source, local-first edition lives at github.com/busabase/busabase — the concepts below are identical.

Want to look around before signing up? Open the interactive demo — it's a fully seeded workspace, no account required.

Create an account with email or OAuth. Busabase auto-creates your first workspace (named after your email handle) and drops you on the dashboard — no setup wizard required to get going.

A workspace is your top-level container for bases, members, and tokens. You can rename it or invite teammates later from Organizations & Teams.

Your workspace and its bases in the left sidebar

Meet your first base

Your workspace ships with a starter base. A base defines one content type — its fields, types, and validation — exactly like a typed spreadsheet.

This is your canonical data: the rows here are approved records on the main branch. New edits never overwrite them; they arrive as change requests for review (next step).

A table's records grid — your approved rows

Bases are made of typed fields — text, number, select, attachment, relation, and more. See Field Types for the full registry.

Open the Inbox

Head to the Inbox — the single queue where every submission waiting for review shows up. Your workspace comes pre-seeded with one sample record so you have something to approve right away.

The Inbox turns the AI firehose into a prioritized to-do list: each item is a change request (a branch of immutable commits) waiting for a human decision.

The Inbox review queue

Review the record — diff, then decide

Click the sample item to open the record detail. You'll see the rendered preview, the field-by-field diff of what changed, and the commit history behind it. Nothing here is editable in place — every change is a new commit, so you always have a complete audit trail.

You have three moves:

Approve — marks the change request Approved · ready to merge. This is the last human check before it takes effect; nothing is overwritten yet.
Revise — leave a comment, or type @AI to ask your agent to rework it (more on that below).
Reject — close the change request without merging.

Record detail with diff and audit trail

Approve, then merge 🎉

The public Demo is read-only. Use it to inspect the sample request and field-level diff; review and merge controls are intentionally hidden. Complete the steps below in an activated workspace.

In a real workspace, click Approve to move the change request to Approved · ready to merge. That is step one — review only; the canonical data is still untouched.

Then click Merge into Base. The record advances, the Inbox empties, and you've completed the full Busabase loop: submit → review → merge, with history intact.

From the empty Inbox you'll see two CTAs — Connect an agent and Get your API key. Pick whichever matches how you'll feed real content in next.

That's the whole loop: approve (review) → merge (take effect). Everything else just scales this loop up — more agents, more reviewers, more channels.

Feed in real content

Two ways to get beyond the sample record:

A. Submit via the API. Generate a scoped token from Settings → API Keys, then have any system POST a record into your Inbox over the REST API at /api/v1. The API key settings page gives you ready-to-paste curl, Python, and Node snippets wired to your workspace. See API keys and the REST API guide.

B. Connect an agent. Busabase has no built-in model — you bring your own. Paste one prompt to point Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex at your workspace; it proposes records as change requests for you to approve, and a one-line npx skills add busabase/skills installs a permanent skill so it just knows Busabase every session. (Agents can also act as your in-app @AI revisor — typing @AI tighten this intro in a comment dispatches one.) See Bring Your Own Agent.

An agent's output, ready for review

What you just learned

A workspace holds your bases, members, and tokens.
A base defines a content type; an approved record is the canonical row.
Every edit is an immutable commit; a change request is a branch under review.
Approving, then merging fast-forwards the record — a clean, diffable audit trail comes free.

Next steps

Keep going:

Core Concepts — the git-shaped model, end to end.
Change Requests — the review workflow in depth.
Bring Your Own Agent — hand the wheel to Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex with one prompt.
REST API — submit and read records programmatically.

Quick Start

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