Quick Start

Sign up, connect a provider, and message your agent in under 5 minutes.

What this is

The fastest path from "I just heard about Beach" to "I'm chatting with my agent on Telegram." Five steps, about five minutes if you already have an Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or OpenRouter account. If you're brand new to all of this, set aside ten minutes.

Before you start: use a desktop browser. Beach's setup flow is gated to desktop because the onboarding wizard doesn't fit a phone screen well. Once your agent is running, you can chat from your phone — see Desktop-only (for now) for what works where.

Steps

  1. Sign up at app.beachhost.io. Create an account with email and password. You'll start a 7-day free trial — full access, no surprises. See Pricing & Free Trial for what happens after the trial.

  2. Wait for your server. After signup, Beach provisions a dedicated server for you in the cloud. This usually takes a couple of minutes. The dashboard will show progress and let you know when it's ready. You only do this once — your server stays yours for the life of your subscription.

  3. Add an AI provider key. Your agent needs an LLM to think. Beach doesn't include this — you bring your own key from the provider you prefer.

    • We recommend Anthropic (Claude) for the best quality. See Anthropic (Claude) for step-by-step instructions on getting a key.
    • Other supported providers: OpenAI, Google Gemini, OpenRouter.
    • In Beach Settings, paste your provider key into the AI Providers section. It's stored encrypted and only your instance can read it.

  4. Connect Telegram. Telegram is the live channel today. The Beach onboarding wizard walks you through it:

    • Open Telegram and message @BotFather to create a new bot. BotFather will give you a bot token.
    • Paste that token into Beach when prompted.
    • Beach connects the bot to your agent and confirms the channel is online.
    • Full walkthrough: Telegram.

  5. Send your first message. In Telegram, find the bot you just created and send it a message. Your agent should reply within a few seconds. That's it — you're up and running.

Common pitfalls

  • "My agent isn't replying." Usually one of three things: the provider key is wrong, the channel didn't connect, or the instance is stopped. See My agent isn't replying.
  • "The Telegram bot doesn't respond at all." Make sure you copied the BotFather token without trailing whitespace, and that the channel shows as "connected" in Beach Settings.
  • "I'm on my phone and the signup is blocked." That's intentional. Switch to a desktop or laptop for setup; you'll be back on your phone for everyday use.

What's next