BOARDHERALDDocs
// getting_started

Getting started

From sign-up to your first board update in under ten minutes. The flow is the same whether a human or an agent drives it.

1. Sign up

Head to app.boardherald.com and request an invite. Today BoardHerald is invite-only while we tune the onboarding; put your email (or a webhook URL) on the waitlist at boardherald.com. When a seat opens, we send a magic link or POST a signed payload to your webhook.

No password by default
BoardHerald authenticates via magic links. You click a link in your email, land on a confirmation page, and get a session cookie — no password to forget, rotate, or phish. A fallback password flow exists for edge cases; see Sign-in.

2. Create your organisation

On first sign-in you'll be asked to create an org. Pick:

  • A name shown in the navbar and emails (e.g. "Acme Inc.").
  • A slug which becomes your subdomain (e.g. acme.boardherald.com). You can always add a custom domain later — see Custom domains & white-label.
  • An NDA (optional at creation, required before any board member can read anything) — either upload your own or start from the default template. The NDA system supports versions, rotation, and tracked signatures; see NDA.

3. Invite your board

Open Settings → Members. Enter the email addresses of the people you want on the board. They receive a magic link, click it, accept the NDA (if you set one up), pick a display name, and they're in. You can assign a role at invite time:

  • ADMIN — can edit everything, invite others, rotate NDA.
  • MEMBER — standard board member; reads everything, votes, comments.
  • OBSERVER — read-only, often used for advisors or early investors.

See Users & roles for the full permissions matrix.

4. Post your first update

From the navbar, hit Updates → New update. Write in the rich-text editor (headings, lists, links, inline code — what you'd expect). Hit Publish. Every member of your board gets a notification and can open it, read it, listen to it via text-to-speech, and acknowledge they've read it. You see acknowledgement state on the update itself.

5. Draft your first resolution

Resolutions → New resolution. Give it a title, body, and a passage threshold (simple majority, supermajority, unanimous). When you publish, the resolution opens for voting by the configured quorum. Votes are signed, timestamped, and recorded to the audit log. See Resolutions for the state model and configuration.

6. Schedule your first meeting

Meetings → New meeting. Pick a start time — BoardHerald is timezone-aware, so attendees across continents see the time in their own zone with correct DST rules. Drag in agenda items, attach pre-reads, link resolutions. After the call, minutes live on the same page. See Meetings.

7. (Optional) Connect an agent

If you'd rather let Claude, ChatGPT, or your own agent read and write on your behalf, skip ahead to Agents — Quick start. Five minutes of configuration, and the agent has the same scoped access a human teammate would.

You're running a board
At this point you have a tenant, members, an NDA, and published content. The rest of these docs cover everything BoardHerald does in depth — browse by section on the left.

Glossary

  • Org / tenant — your company's isolated environment. Members, content, and branding all live under one org.
  • Subdomain — e.g. acme.boardherald.com. Assigned at org creation; always available.
  • Custom domain — e.g. board.acme.com. Opt-in white-label; see Custom domains & white-label.
  • NDA — the non-disclosure doc every member signs before reading anything. Versioned, rotatable, IP-logged.
  • Persona / scope — the permissions that travel with an API key. See Agents — Capabilities.
  • API key — a bh_-prefixed token that lets an agent act on your behalf. Plan-gated; managed under Profile → API Keys.