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Getting started

Getting started

Set up your workspace, connect your first integration, and ship a Golden Thread in 30 minutes.

ProductOS gives product managers a single operating system for everything between a raw piece of feedback and a measured outcome. This guide walks you through the first 30 minutes: workspace setup, your first integration, and shipping a Golden Thread from feedback through to outcome.

Before you start

You'll need:

  • An invite to a ProductOS workspace, or the ability to sign up at productos.ca.
  • An Anthropic API key if you want to use the AI features. ProductOS is "bring your own key", you pay Anthropic directly, we never touch your billing. Onboarding uses a ProductOS-funded key so you can try the AI before plugging yours in.
  • (Optional) Admin access to one of the systems you want to integrate: GitHub, Linear, Jira, Intercom, etc.

Step 1: Land in the wizard

When you sign up, ProductOS routes you through an AI-assisted onboarding wizard at /onboarding. Pick a path:

  • A brand new idea: chat through what you want to build; the wizard drafts your strategy, workspace structure, and a starter Golden Thread from the conversation.
  • An existing product: paste a summary; the wizard extracts the structure and seeds the same set.

After that you name the product, review the generated suggestions, optionally paste your Anthropic key, name the workspace, and land on the dashboard. Only the workspace owner goes through the wizard; invited members skip it.

You can re-run onboarding any time from Settings → Workspace → Re-run onboarding (owner only). It removes every row onboarding created and sends you back through the wizard.

Step 2: Plug in the Anthropic key

Go to Settings → AI (admin or owner) and paste your key, or do it on the wizard's API-key step. Keys are per user: every AI call you make runs on the key saved under your own account.

Onboarding and a capped daily allowance of PM Coach questions are the only things that run on ProductOS-funded keys. Everything else runs on your key once you've saved one.

Step 3: Connect your first integration

From Settings → Integrations pick the system holding your customer feedback today. Common starting points:

  • Intercom: pulls tagged conversations into Feedback (one-way)
  • GitHub App: indexes your repos, links PRs to Claude Code sessions, powers Send to Claude Code
  • Linear / Jira: imports issues as features (preview, pick, commit); a feature shipped in ProductOS is marked done upstream
  • Slack: registers an incoming webhook for outbound notifications; it receives the connection test message; per-event posts are planned

Most integrations take an API token: click Connect, paste it, and Connect & test. The GitHub App sends you through GitHub's install flow instead. For Linear and Jira, Import from Linear / Jira previews the issues first; nothing is written until you click Import. Other sync providers pull on Sync now or on their schedule.

Step 4: Ship a Golden Thread

The whole point of ProductOS is closing the loop from a customer voice to a measured outcome. Walk it once on the sample data:

  1. Open Feedback: press c to add a row, or click an existing one to open it.
  2. In the dialog, link it to a Theme (create the theme first on Themes if none fits).
  3. Open the theme and press n f (New feature linked to entity) to spawn a Feature that's already linked to it.
  4. Open the feature and link it to an Initiative (n i creates one already linked).
  5. On Releases, create a Release with a version and a date, then link the feature and the initiative to it.
  6. Once it ships, record the Outcome against the initiative (hit, missed, mixed, or pending until the data lands), and you've closed the loop.

Every entity along the way carries a sequence ID (FDBK-000123, FEAT-000045, OUTC-000007) so you can deep-link from anywhere (chat, Slack, an external doc) back into ProductOS.

What's next

Last reviewed 2026-09-22