---
title: Quickstart
description: Start your first session in five minutes.
section: Start
order: 2
---

# Quickstart

This guide takes you from opening Admiral to reviewing your agent's first change. No account is needed.

## 1. Open Admiral and add a project

A project is a folder on your machine. It holds your sessions, and your machine runs the agent for them.

1. Open Admiral. The first screen offers an Admiral account. Select **Skip** to continue with no account.
2. Select **New session** in the sidebar.
3. Pick a folder for the project. Use a folder that is a git repository when you have one. You can also clone or create a repository from the picker.

## 2. Pick the agent and model

The composer at the bottom has pickers for the agent, the model, and the branch.

- Keep the default agent and model, or pick another from the picker.
- Pick the branch the agent works on. Turn on the worktree toggle to give the agent its own copy of the repository, away from your working files.

## 3. Send your first prompt

Type what you want in the composer and select **Send**. Example:

> Explain how this project is structured, then list the three files you would change first to add a dark mode toggle.

The agent starts. Its reply, tool use, and edits stream into the transcript.

## 4. Watch and steer

- The session status shows the state: blue for running, amber when the agent needs you, green when it is done, red when it failed.
- Type more instructions while the agent works. **Send** adds them to the running turn.
- Select **Stop** to interrupt the agent.

## 5. Review the changes

Open the **Changes** pane. It shows every changed file as a diff, with added and removed lines. Collapse a file when you are done with it.

## Sign in later

Everything above works without an account. Sign in when you want your sessions on a second device or your phone. Sign in from Settings > Account. See [Connect another device](../guides/connect-another-device.md).

## Next steps

- [The main window](the-main-window.md): learn the layout.
- [Steer and queue](../guides/steer-and-queue.md): master Send, Queue, and Stop.
- [Review changes](../guides/review-changes.md): read diffs with confidence.