# Create and configure a project Work through website setup, topics, competitors, prompts, scheduling, and plan activation without confusing project and workspace settings. Canonical: https://docs.equalai.io/getting-started/onboarding Markdown: https://docs.equalai.io/getting-started/onboarding.md Onboarding establishes what EqualAI should recognize and track for a project. Review the generated suggestions before continuing; your website may have several products, regional brands, or similarly named competitors. ## 1. Enter your website On **Enter your website**, provide the **Domain**, **Main Country**, **Main Language**, and **App timezone**. - Use the domain you intend to monitor, rather than a competitor's website. - **Match exact subdomain only** narrows owned-citation matching to that exact host. Without exact matching, a host and its subdomains can count as owned. - Review the timezone after choosing a country. It is your app display preference, not a second target market. - **Send me weekly visibility reports for this project** controls the project's email-report preference. Continue and allow the website analysis to finish. EqualAI uses it to prefill later steps. If project capacity is exhausted or subscription access blocks setup, review the workspace subscription rather than repeatedly creating drafts. ## 2. Review Project Details Check **Name**, **Industry**, and **Description**. Make the description specific enough to distinguish this brand from unrelated organizations. Use **Alternative names** for distinctive former names, brand spellings, or acronyms that AI answers may use. The project name and domain are already matched; do not add the domain again. Up to 12 additional names are accepted. Each should be 2–60 characters and no more than six words. Very short names must be uppercase acronyms; common fragments and redundant variants may be rejected. Follow the validation message rather than adding broad terms that could match unrelated brands. ## 3. Review Topics Edit or remove suggested topics and use **Add custom topic** to add a missing subject, within the limit shown on screen. Choose **Have your own prompts? Skip suggestions →** if you already have questions to track. Changing topics can clear generated prompts, so finish the topic review before carefully curating generated questions. ## 4. Review Competitors Review the proposed **Competitors**, including their domains and identifiers. Discard irrelevant suggestions and add relevant alternatives. Include at least one competitor to complete setup. Aliases can help recognize abbreviations, product names, or common misspellings associated with that competitor. Avoid generic identifiers that could describe many companies. Competitor settings belong to this project and are subject to its competitor limit. ## 5. Review prompts In **Review prompts**, inspect the questions grouped by topic. Remove questions that do not match your tracking goal. At least one prompt is needed. To add your own questions, use **One prompt** or **Paste list**. For a pasted list: 1. Put one prompt on each line. 2. Keep each prompt between 3 and 500 characters. 3. Paste no more than 500 candidates at once, and stay within available prompt capacity. 4. Review the accepted and held-back counts before continuing. Leading bullets and numbered-list prefixes are removed. Equivalent entries differing only in case, spacing, or trailing punctuation may be treated as duplicates. Imported prompts are organized into topics without generating extra prompts. **Synthetic example:** `Which features matter when choosing a hiking backpack?` is a sample question for a fictional retailer, not a customer prompt. ## 6. Choose initial tracking Review the models and weekly run days in the onboarding schedule. Model availability and credit costs can differ. Choose a cadence that leaves room for manual investigations as well as routine tracking. After setup, the full [schedule dialog](https://docs.equalai.io/tracking/schedules) provides weekly or monthly configuration and explicit Standard or Instant manual runs. Check its upcoming-run preview before relying on a time. ## 7. Review the report and plan The website report offers a starting assessment. Use **Try again** if the report cannot be built, or **Continue** to proceed. Report generation and email delivery may finish separately; a pending email is not necessarily a failed report. The plan step shows the available monthly and annual options. Review the current price, capacity, billing interval, and checkout confirmation. Existing subscription access can change which activation steps are needed. Do not assume that creating a project starts a trial or gives it a separate subscription. ## Complete team setup If post-payment setup appears, answer the role, function, goal, and referral questions. These describe how you intend to use EqualAI; the invitation role is the control that grants teammates access. - **Company Admin:** workspace-wide access, including billing and team management. - **Company Member:** editing access to the selected project. - **Company Viewer:** read-only access to the selected project. Add each email and choose **Send invite**, or **Skip for now**. Invitations can be managed later in [Team Members](https://docs.equalai.io/account/team-members). **Explore insights** opens the application when setup is complete. ## Resume or troubleshoot A saved draft can resume at an incomplete step. If returning to an earlier step changes suggestions, review downstream prompts and competitors again. Do not use a new-project draft to repair an existing project: use [Project settings](https://docs.equalai.io/account/project-settings). If a save fails, keep the visible error, confirm the selected project and your permissions, and check [billing](https://docs.equalai.io/account/billing) for capacity restrictions. For persistent setup failures, contact [support](https://docs.equalai.io/account/support).