# 0:00 · Sign In & Get Your Bearings

_LOFTai › Your First Hour_

**Goal:** a project of your own, and enough of a map that nothing in the UI is a mystery. Ten minutes.

## Step 1 — Sign in and land

Signing in drops you on the **Projects** page — your home base for as long as you use Loft. If your org already has projects, you'll see them as cards; a view toggle in the toolbar switches to a table.

Note: **Local track:** open LoftDesktop instead of a browser and sign in there. Everything below looks the same — the desktop app is the same interface with the ability to reach your local drive.

## Step 2 — Make a project

1.  Click **New Project**.
2.  Enter a **name** and **initials** — both required. Initials are the short code you'll see everywhere, so keep them short and distinct (e.g. `DEMO`).
3.  Pick a **project type**. This is the one choice worth thinking about: it seeds your starting libraries, so you don't begin from an empty structure.
4.  Optionally set an accent color, a description, and start/due dates.
5.  Click **Save**. Loft opens the new project's **Project Detail** page and the sidebar switches to that project.

Tip: Don't agonize over the project type — you can add or remove libraries later. For this hour, any type with a Shots or Characters library is a good pick.

## Step 3 — The 60-second tour

Before you touch anything else, learn the two pieces of furniture you'll use all hour.

**The sidebar** (left) is grouped:

-   OVERVIEW — Projects, My Tasks, My Queue, Search, Explore, Composer, Flows
-   LIBRARIES — this project's asset categories; where your work lives (Local mode adds a "Files" entry that browses your folder directly)
-   MANAGE — Tasks, Types, Libraries, Primers, Queue, Costing
-   ADMIN — Models, Users, Groups, Settings

**The header** (top) carries the things you reach for constantly:

-   Quick Search — `Cmd` + `K` / `Ctrl` + `K` jumps anywhere without navigating
-   Assistant — the conversational agent, opens as a side panel you can work alongside
-   The credits chip — your balance; click it for the wallet
-   The **bell** — while anything of yours is generating the badge turns amber and counts those jobs, and the panel lists them at the top; click one to jump to the folder its output will land in. Below that are your recent notifications — opening the panel clears the unread count
-   The user menu (where dark/light mode lives)

## Step 4 — Give the project a face

On Project Detail, hover the large preview area and drop in an image (PNG/JPG/WebP). Small thing, but it's the fastest way to make the Projects page readable once you have more than three projects.

While you're here, note two hover-revealed buttons in the header — the **pencil** (edit name, dates, visibility) and the **book** (Project Playbook). You'll use the book in lesson 4.

## Checkpoint

-   You're on a Project Detail page with your project's name at the top.
-   The sidebar has a LIBRARIES group with at least one library in it.
-   You can press Cmd/Ctrl+K and get a search palette, then dismiss it.

If LIBRARIES is empty, your project type didn't seed any — that's fine, you'll create one in the next lesson.

Note: Reference topics for this lesson: **Projects** and **Project Detail**.