Documentation
Capstan
Getting started
Updated
This page takes you from an empty Laravel Cloud account to a running Capstan with people signed in to it. Capstan does nothing visible until you switch a capability on, so the last step points you at the page for the one you want.
Install it through Scalpels
Connect GitHub and Laravel Cloud to your Scalpels team, open the catalog, choose Capstan and install it. The general flow, including how a failed install resumes, is in Install a product. Installing Capstan needs a supporter or partner team because it is Experimental.
You are never asked to type an environment value. Every setting Capstan declares has a working default, and both capabilities default to off, so a fresh install is a running Capstan with nothing switched on.
What the install creates
On your Laravel Cloud account, Scalpels creates exactly what Capstan's manifest declares:
| Resource | Why Capstan needs it |
|---|---|
| Application on PHP 8.5 | Capstan requires PHP 8.5. |
| Serverless PostgreSQL 18 database | Accounts, artifacts metadata, Postmaster inboxes, messages and agents. It also holds Capstan's cache, including the lock that stops the scheduled sweep overlapping itself. |
| Managed queue | Capstan's accounts package delivers its ownership handshake with Scalpels as a queued job. |
| Object storage bucket | Artifact HTML is stored privately on it and streamed back by the app. Without a bucket, every artifact shared before the last deploy would disappear. |
| Scheduler | Postmaster's liveness sweep and dead-agent cleanup run every minute. |
After the deploy, Scalpels runs php artisan migrate --force to create the schema. The fork in your GitHub account and everything on your Cloud account are yours.
Sign in
Capstan has no public sign-up page. Open the deployment's page in Scalpels: when Scalpels has finished enrolling the deployment for managed sign-in, it shows an Open Capstan button that signs you in. If that enrolment has not completed, the deployment page offers to enrol it again.
You land on the dashboard. The sidebar has Dashboard, Account (your settings, credentials and team, under /bfc/ui) and, once Postmaster is switched on, Postmaster. The dashboard itself is an empty placeholder in the current release; the useful screens are Postmaster and Account.
Invite your team
Capstan has three roles:
- Owner: one per installation. The only account that can promote and remove Admins.
- Admin: can invite Members and manage the team alongside the Owner.
- Member: can use both capabilities, generate a Postmaster agent installer and see the liveness map.
To invite someone, open /bfc/members as an Owner or Admin and enter their email address. Owners and Admins can invite Members; only the Owner can invite an Admin. The person opens the invitation link, submits the acceptance form, and appears in the members list as active with the role you chose.
The members page lists pending invitations but does not show their links. Whether the invitation email actually reaches the person depends on the mail transport the deployment uses; see Troubleshooting.
Switch on a capability
Pick the one you came for:
- Artifact hosting needs a custom app domain; Scalpels enables the feature intent and supplies the separate render hostname automatically.
- Postmaster needs its flag and a one-time signing key command run inside the environment.
Both are environment settings described in Configuration. Once a capability is on, your tools need a token to use it: see API tokens.
Check that it is up
GET /up on the app's hostname returns 200 once the application has booted. The Console in Scalpels also lists the deployment with its vitals.