GudDesk
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Quickstart

Quickstart

Get GudDesk up and running in 5 minutes with our hosted cloud or a local development setup.

This guide gets you from zero to a working GudDesk instance in under 5 minutes.

Option A: Hosted Cloud (Fastest)

  1. Create an account at guddesk.com/register
  2. Create a workspace and configure your workspace name
  3. Install the chat widget on your site (see Widget Installation)
  4. Start chatting — open your site and send a test message

That's it. Your shared inbox, knowledge base, and AI agents are ready to go.

Option B: Local Development

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 20+
  • pnpm (recommended) or npm
  • PostgreSQL 15+ (or Docker)

Steps

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/guddesk/guddesk.git
cd guddesk
 
# 2. Install dependencies
pnpm install
 
# 3. Set up environment variables
cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your configuration:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/guddesk"
AUTH_SECRET="your-random-secret-here"
NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL="http://localhost:3000"
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID="your-google-client-id"
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET="your-google-client-secret"
RESEND_API_KEY="your-resend-api-key"
# 4. Push the database schema
pnpm db:push
 
# 5. Start the development server
pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:3000 — you should see the GudDesk dashboard.

Next Steps

IntroductionSelf-Hosting