The setup wizard, step by step

The wizard starts the first time you open your dashboard. It takes about 10 minutes, checks each step on the spot, and saves your progress as you go: close the tab whenever, and it reopens exactly where you stopped.

Step 1 - Add your site

Name, domain, and GitHub repo of your website - the site you want Google traffic for, not the machine DispatchSEO runs on. The repo is the owner/repo part of its GitHub URL. Then one question: does your site have a blog? "Not sure" is a valid answer - Claude checks the repo and decides during setup.

Step 2 - Connect Google Search Console

This is where your ranking and traffic numbers come from. DispatchSEO reads them through a service account - a robot Google account that it signs in as. You create one once and it works for every site you ever add.

The wizard walks you through it with direct links: create a Google Cloud project, enable the Search Console API, create the service account, download its key file, and paste the file's contents into the wizard. The key is stored encrypted in your own database.

Then you add the service account's email as a user in Search Console (the wizard shows the exact clicks) and press Verify connection - it asks Google right then and tells you if it worked. Google occasionally takes a few minutes to catch up; you can continue and it re-checks on its own.

Step 3 - Pick a keyword data source

Two choices, switchable later in Settings:

• DataForSEO (paid, recommended): real Google search volumes and difficulty scores - the same data most SEO tools resell. Pay as you go; a typical site costs $2-5/month, and new accounts get $1 free.
• Free mode ($0 forever): Claude finds opportunities in your own Search Console data and Google's autocomplete suggestions. If you go free, the wizard offers one optional upgrade: a free SerpApi key (250 searches/month, no credit card) that lets Claude look at the real Google results page before writing, to judge whether a keyword is winnable.

Whatever you pick, the wizard verifies the credentials against the real service before saving them.

Step 4 - Claude Code

Nothing to do here - it just explains the division of labor: Claude Code is the brain, DispatchSEO is its memory and dashboard. The connection itself happens at the finish line.

Step 5 - Publish mode

Should anything go live without you?

• Semi-automatic (recommended to start): Claude researches and builds on its own, but you approve ideas and click Merge on finished pages. A few minutes of your attention a week.
• Automatic: everything runs itself; pages that pass their checks publish without anyone touching them. You can watch and undo from the dashboard.

There's a Semi/Auto toggle in the dashboard's top bar, so this is never a final answer.

Step 6 - One-tap merge (optional)

Claude ships pages as GitHub pull requests. If you give the dashboard a GitHub token, its Approve button also merges - approve = live on your site. The wizard links you to a pre-filled GitHub page, you press Generate, paste the token, and it's verified against your repo before saving (encrypted, like everything else). Skipping is fine: you'll just merge each PR on GitHub yourself.

Step 7 - The honest timeline

A month-by-month picture of what SEO actually looks like, so a quiet first month reads as "on schedule" instead of "broken". Just read it.

The finish line: two pastes

The last screen gives you two things to copy:

1. A terminal command that connects your Claude Code to this project. Run it inside your site's repo folder.
2. A chat message to paste into Claude Code itself (open the repo, type claude, paste). This one does the actual install.

From that second paste, your agent takes over: it writes the automation workflow files into your repo, sets the repo secrets, opens one pull request with all of it, personalizes the backlink playbook for your product, and kicks off your first keyword research. You approve its steps in the chat as it goes. It needs Claude Code and the GitHub CLI (gh) installed, and it's safe to re-run if anything is interrupted.

Docker installs get one more item on the same screen: turning on automatic builds. Two pastes - a token created on your own computer (claude setup-token), then one line on the machine running DispatchSEO - and the wizard's checklist flips green when the builder makes its first check-in.

The wizard tracks all of it live. When the pipeline PR is open, it shows "Your move: merge the pipeline PR" with a direct link - merging that PR is your one required click. The agent then verifies the full checklist (workflows on the main branch, permissions, labels, secrets) and reports back over MCP; the backend double-checks it independently. The dashboard only unlocks once everything genuinely works. If the wizard says it's still waiting, the agent isn't done yet - check its chat.