Skip to main content

First Run

You've installed JSS and run jss start. Here's what to do with it.

You should see the welcome page​

Open http://localhost:<port> (or whichever URL the server printed in the banner) in a browser. You'll see a Welcome page with a Get started button and — depending on what features you have on — Sign up and Sign in buttons.

If you see a JSON container listing instead of HTML, that's fine too: it just means there's no index.html in your data directory yet. The seeded landing page is skip-if-exists, so an existing operator file is preserved.

Try it in a Solid app​

The fastest way to "feel" the pod is to point an existing Solid app at it.

  • Mashlib data browser — built into JSS. Visit http://localhost:<port>/?inbox to open it. Sign in with your WebID and explore.
  • Pilot — solidos.github.io/pilot. A friendly notes app from the Solid Project that uses your pod as backend.
  • More apps — solidproject.org/apps.

When the app asks for your WebID or pod URL, give it the URL of your JSS server.

Sign up / sign in​

The Sign up and Sign in buttons on the landing page are revealed dynamically based on what your server actually exposes — the same seeded HTML adapts when you change modes.

  • Multi-user with --idp — Sign up creates a new pod. Sign in logs into an existing one.
  • Single-user (--single-user) — Sign up is hidden (registration is intentionally disabled). Sign in logs in as the single user (default name: me).
  • No IDP — Both buttons are hidden. Use a Solid app's OIDC flow against an external Identity Provider, or use Nostr (NIP-98) auth.

Connect from your own app​

JSS speaks Solid-OIDC. From a JavaScript app:

import { Session } from '@inrupt/solid-client-authn-browser';

const session = new Session();
await session.login({
  oidcIssuer: 'http://localhost:<port>/',
  redirectUrl: window.location.href,
  clientName: 'My App',
});

The oidcIssuer must match what your server publishes at /.well-known/openid-configuration. JSS sets this automatically based on the host you started on.

Enable more features​

JSS ships with several optional features off by default. Enable them with flags:

FlagWhat you get
--idpBuilt-in OIDC Identity Provider
--nostrNostr relay at /relay
--webrtcWebRTC signalling
--activitypubActivityPub federation
--gitGit HTTP backend (clone/push)
--payHTTP 402 paid /pay/* routes
--mongoMongoDB-backed /db/ route
--tunnelPublic-tunnel exposure
--terminalWeb terminal at /.terminal
--mashlibBundled Solid data browser
--notificationsWebSocket change notifications

Full list and per-flag options: jss start --help.

Customise the landing page​

The Welcome page lives at index.html in your data directory. Edit it directly to change the copy, swap in your own HTML, or replace it entirely:

$EDITOR ./data/index.html   # or wherever your --root points

JSS will never overwrite an operator-provided file. The same skip-if-exists rule applies to /.acl and /index.html.acl — write your own if you need stricter (or looser) access rules.

If you want to revert to the default page, just delete index.html and restart the server.

Where to ask questions​

Want to dig deeper? Try the Quick Start for a curl-driven tour of the LDP API, or read Core Concepts to learn how JSS thinks about data.