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Craftifact

Create your first instance

Shortest path from a paid subscription to a running Craftifact instance.

Quick path

  1. Open the Control Plane.
  2. In Create instance, choose Craftifact, pick the plan covered by your subscription, and optionally set a display name.
  3. Decide how the instance should authenticate admins: Keep “Use iam.soluforge.de as IdP” for the fastest start, or enter custom OIDC settings if the instance should use your own identity provider.
  4. Submit the form. Provisioning starts immediately.
  5. Open the instance once it appears in My applications. While provisioning is still running, you can already prepare the Effective configuration.
  6. When the instance is ready, edit Effective configuration, add any required values in Secrets, then use Deploy Config.
  7. Use Launch and sign in to Craftifact with the instance admin account.
Rationale: why the first admin account is separate
The Control Plane account and the Craftifact instance login are different identities. With the managed SoluForge IdP, the first instance creates an admin user in a dedicated realm for your instance. Even if you reuse the same email address, it is still a separate account.

What the first instance already contains

  • A generated instance configuration in Effective configuration.
  • An initial hosted oci repository.
  • Three roles: admin, developer, and viewer.
  • An admin role assignment for the initial administrator email.
  • On Pro and above, seeded retention policy examples for the initial hosted oci repository.

What to check after provisioning

  • Instance overview for reachability, default domain, and location.
  • Identity Provider if you want to switch from the managed IdP to your own OIDC provider.
  • Secrets before referencing ${VAR} placeholders in config.
  • Actions for Deploy Config, Launch, Update, and reboots.
Rationale: why Deploy Config is explicit
Saving config and deploying config are intentionally separate. That lets you validate and stage changes first, then decide when they become the active runtime configuration.

Where to go next