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The Quickstart ran your backend on the Xano Engine with no account. This page puts the same code in Xano’s cloud for the first time, on an ephemeral: a disposable environment with its own URL. Nothing here touches a workspace’s live backend.

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1. Create an account

Sign up at xano.com. The Free plan is enough for everything on this page. During sign-up you get an instance and a workspace.

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2. Sign in from the project

login opens your browser to sign in to Xano and approve the CLI (OAuth with PKCE, so there are no API keys to copy). You pick the instance and the workspace at that step. The credential is saved in ~/.xanosdk/auth.json and works from any project on this machine.
On a remote shell, a container or a Codespace, the browser cannot reach the CLI’s 127.0.0.1 callback. Run npx xanosdk login --paste instead: it prints the sign-in URL, and after you approve you paste the redirect URL from the browser’s address bar back into the terminal.

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3. Confirm where you are signed in

One credential addresses exactly one instance and one workspace, so there is no --workspace flag. If either is wrong, run npx xanosdk login --force and pick again.

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4. Deploy to an ephemeral

For a quick look, deploy the backend and the built frontend:
To deploy to an ephemeral and run your tests against it, which is the first step of every release:
The first run creates an ephemeral and prints its URL. Later runs refresh the same one, and a new URL is called out if it expired. --test runs the tests the deployed backend carries and exits 5 if one fails (the deploy stays in place either way).
Run the impersonate command it prints to open the Xano editor on the ephemeral. The ephemeral and the Engine are the same backend, one in the cloud and one on your machine. Keep developing against the Engine with npm run xano:deploy. Deploy to an ephemeral when you want a shared URL or are ready to release.
Some instances have ephemerals turned off. There, you stage on a Xano branch of your workspace instead; Releases shows how.

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Next

Deploy to Xano: cut a release from the ephemeral and promote it to your workspace.