Getting started with Everlock

From nothing to a running instance with a published website in ten minutes. First, pick how you want to drive the setup — the whole guide adapts to your choice:

Your AI assistant (MCP) SSH console

1. Install and start

Download the single binary from the download page and start it:

curl -fL https://everlock.sh/dl/latest/qwen3/everlock-linux-amd64 -o everlock
chmod +x everlock
./everlock serve --backend-admin-mcp --backend-admin-mcp-vhost localhost

curl -fL https://everlock.sh/dl/latest/qwen3/everlock-linux-amd64 -o everlock
chmod +x everlock
./everlock serve

The first start prints the bootstrap credentials:

bootstrap admin credentials
  username: admin
  password: …
  api key:  evapi_…

Save both lines — they are shown exactly once.

2. Connect

Add the instance to your MCP client with the printed API key. For Claude Code:

claude mcp add everlock --transport http http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer evapi_…"

Or, for Codex:

export EVERLOCK_API_KEY='evapi_…'
codex mcp add everlock --url http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  --bearer-token-env-var EVERLOCK_API_KEY
codex

Connect with the printed password:

ssh -p 2222 admin@localhost

3. Publish your first website

Ask your assistant:

"can you build me a hello world website and serve it on website.local"

Your site is live at http://website.local:8080.

/backends enable site-http git-ssh
/site create my-site vhost=localhost mode=markdown

4. Further Content Interaction

Content travels over git (authenticated with the same bootstrap credentials). Clone the site's repository, add a page, push:

git clone ssh://admin@localhost:2222/my-site
cd my-site
echo "# Hello" > index.md
git add . && git commit -m "first page" && git push

Where to go next

Admin over MCP — key management, public hosts over HTTPS, and the full tool surface
Run it as a service — systemd, or the container image at cr.everlock.sh/everlock
AI model variants — what the qwen3 in the download URL selects
Architecture — the system model behind what you just did
Docs and the configuration reference