Your first project

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Say it plainly before you begin: nothing you build goes online until you are on Pro or Max. A free account can create a project, describe it, generate it and read the result inside MaShop. The first publish is refused.

Sending a message in the chat is the only step of this walkthrough that spends credits. Everything else is free.

What each action costs

• Every message you send is billed in credits, at the real provider cost, converted at 100 credits per dollar, with a floor of 0.01 credit.
• Everything else in this page is free: connecting your services, creating the project, deploying, restoring a version, inviting someone.
• A reply that returns nothing costs nothing. The reservation is cancelled instead of confirmed.

No fixed price per message exists, because the cost follows the tokens the model actually consumes. Two things keep it readable. Every assistant reply carries a badge with the credits actually charged, to two decimals. And a single generation carries a cost ceiling. What things cost holds the full table, case by case.

1. Create your account

Sign up with an email and a password, or with Google or GitHub. An email signup has to be confirmed: click the link in the activation mail. The screen that follows offers to send it again, and continues on its own once the address is confirmed.

A new account receives no welcome credits.

2. Connect GitHub, Supabase and Netlify

The first time you reach the workspace, MaShop sends you to a five step wizard: GitHub, Supabase, Netlify, first project, setting up. This is where the accounts are attached, before any project exists.

GitHub and Supabase are required. Creating a project without them is refused. Netlify is optional at creation and required to publish, since your two sites are built there. The project creation window carries the same three connect buttons, so a service you skipped can be attached from there.

If a service drops mid conversation, the chat answers with an explanation instead of generating, and charges nothing. That check runs on every turn, not only on the first message.

3. Create the project

Give it a name between 2 and 100 characters. The identifier field is editable but ignored: the server builds its own from the name, truncated, followed by five random characters. That identifier names your GitHub repository and both Netlify sites, so you do not choose your address here. You can correct it later in the project settings, which renames the Netlify subdomain when the new name is free.

Creating a project creates nothing on your accounts yet. No database, no repository, no site. It is a draft record inside MaShop.

4. Describe your activity, not a template

Write what the thing does, for whom, and what happens once someone uses it. The classifier that routes your message reads the blast radius, not the length: a long message about one button is a small job, and asking for a whole site is always the largest one.

When MaShop cannot guess a fact that matters, it asks one to three questions in a card and stops there. Answering sends your replies as your next message. Skipping tells the model to choose for you without inventing your contact details.

5. Pick a response mode before you send

Four modes sit under the message box. Ask answers without touching anything, with six read only tools. Plan adds one tool that writes a plan and nothing else. Build offers the full catalogue of 29 tools. Agent offers exactly the same 29 tools, plus an instruction to keep going instead of handing back at each step.

The badge shows Build before you have chosen. That display is not a choice: until you open the menu and click, the server guesses the mode from your message. Agent is never guessed, so it only runs when you pick it.

6. Read what came back

The Files panel lists your pages and email templates, grouped by application. The preview switches to the page you click. The Versions tab lists every successful generation, newest first, with its commit, its file count and the credits it cost.

Only a successful AI generation creates a version. Editing by hand creates none, and neither does a deployment.

7. Publish

Publish is the button at the top right. It requires Pro or Max; a free account gets a refusal that says the plan is missing.

Publishing creates your Supabase project, applies the schema, creates your GitHub repository, pushes the code and launches the first Netlify build. It runs in stages that each save their state, so a slow step never starts over from zero. The first Netlify build does not count against your deployment quota. Publishing describes each stage, its timing and its refusals.

8. Update after every change

Once published, the button reads Update. It rebuilds your two sites from your GitHub repository and opens the build logs. MaShop never announces an unverified success: the site is marked live only when Netlify reports the build ready and a request to the address answers.

9. Sign in to your back office

Your site is online and empty. The back office is the second Netlify site, named after your public site with -admin at the end. The publish window offers it as a button once it is deployed.

The generation writes a first owner account into your database: an address on your own domain and a password it generates. It reports both, with the back office address, in its closing message. Change that password at your first sign in.

If that account was never written, the first person who signs in to the back office becomes its owner. Sign in with an email and a password. The magic link only appears when an email provider is configured on your project, because Supabase cannot deliver it otherwise.

What never reaches your live site

What you type by hand in the editor stays inside MaShop. Ctrl+S saves to the workspace, not to GitHub, and no screen offers to push it. Update rebuilds from GitHub, so your typing is not in the build. Ask the assistant for the change instead, and let the generation commit it.

When it stalls

• Publishing is refused. The account is not on Pro or Max. The deployment button, in contrast, is free for everyone and open to editors.
• Supabase refuses a new project. Its free plan allows two active projects. MaShop says so explicitly when it hits that wall.
• A permanent failure keeps coming back after you fixed it. Unpaid invoice, missing organisation, expired connection and project cap stay opposable for 30 minutes after the recorded failure. Wait it out, then publish again.
• Too many requests. The chat allows 10 messages per minute and 100 per hour.

Publishing fails covers the rest, including a publish that runs longer than the browser waits.

One rough edge worth knowing while you watch it work: the publish window announces 12 migrations and the onboarding step announces 29, while the schema holds 30. The counters are wrong, the schema is not.