Getting started with ARDS

Early access. This doc is v1. It covers the basics, honestly. If something looks wrong, please tell us — see Getting help.

This is the ARDS documentation for testers. It's split into:

• Quickstart — what you'll do in your first 15–30 minutes.
• Core concepts — vocabulary, lifecycle, how coders work, what costs what.
• Guides — task-oriented walkthroughs you'll come back to.
• Workflows — building and running workflows: the editor, the lifecycle, runs and governance. Missions increasingly run this way, so this chapter earns its size.
• Advanced — power-user surfaces. Optional reading; you can ignore them and still get full value from the product.
• How it works / Architecture — how the platform fits together under the hood. Background reading, not required for daily use.
• Reference — tables for states, models, notifications, and a list of pages you can safely skip.
• Troubleshooting — rough edges we already know about.
• Getting help — how to reach us.

If you've just landed via the welcome email, start with What ARDS is and walk straight down the Quickstart sidebar. Everything else can wait.

A note on this doc: it grows alongside the product. We mark known gaps as we go. If a page promises something the UI doesn't deliver, that's a bug in this doc — tell us and we'll fix it.