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Quickstart: Autonomous Infrastructure in 20 Minutes

Published · Last updated: June 2026 · 5 min read

What you will accomplish

In about 20 minutes you will go from a fresh CloudAIPilot account to a live website running on a cloud server you control — no terminal, no shell scripts, no manual server configuration required.

The full path is: connect a cloud account → provision a server → create a site → verify it is live.

Before you begin

  • You have a CloudAIPilot account. If not, see KB-00-02: Create your account.
  • You have an active cloud account with at least one of: AWS, GCP, Azure, or DigitalOcean.
  • For AWS: you will need an IAM Role ARN. For GCP: a Service Account JSON key. For Azure: a Service Principal. For DigitalOcean: an API token. See KB-01 for step-by-step instructions per provider.

Step 1: Connect your cloud account (minutes 1–5)

  1. In the left sidebar, scroll to the More section and click Cloud Accounts.
  2. Click Add Cloud Account.
  3. Select your provider (AWS, GCP, Azure, or DigitalOcean).
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions to enter your credentials. CloudAIPilot runs a pre-flight check to confirm the credentials have sufficient permissions before saving.
  5. Once the check passes and you click Save, the account appears as connected.

Need detailed steps for a specific provider? See KB-01-01 (AWS), KB-01-02 (GCP), KB-01-03 (Azure), or KB-01-04 (DigitalOcean).

Step 2: Provision a server (minutes 6–18)

  1. Click Servers in the sidebar, then click Provision Server.
  2. Select the cloud account you just connected as the provider.
  3. Pick a region close to your target users.
  4. Choose a server plan (CPU and RAM). CloudAIPilot shows the monthly price directly from the provider.
  5. Choose an OS / stack. Select Bare (Ubuntu) for a clean server, or a pre-configured stack (LAMP, LEMP, Docker, etc.) if you want software pre-installed.
  6. Enter a server name (e.g., web-prod-01).
  7. Click Provision.

Provisioning typically takes 5–10 minutes. You can safely close the browser — the process runs in the background. When you return, click Activity in the sidebar to see the progress. The server status changes to Running when complete.

Step 3: Create a site (minutes 19–22)

  1. Click Servers and open the server you just provisioned.
  2. Click the Sites & Apps tab.
  3. Click + Create Site.
  4. Fill in the form:
    • Site name — an internal label (e.g., my-first-site)
    • Domain — optional for now; you can add it later
    • App type — choose the type of site (WordPress, PHP, Node.js, Static, etc.)
    • Environment — leave as production
  5. Click Create Site.

CloudAIPilot creates an nginx virtual host, sets up the directory structure, and (for WordPress) runs the installer automatically. This takes 1–3 minutes. Watch the Activity Center for live progress.

Step 4: Verify your site is live

Once the Activity Center shows the site setup as Completed:

  1. Open the server and go to the Sites & Apps tab.
  2. Your site appears with status running.
  3. If you added a domain, point your domain's DNS A record to the server's IP address (shown in the server overview) and visit the domain in a browser.
  4. If you did not add a domain yet, you can still test by visiting http://[server-IP] directly.

Next steps