Setting up your workspace
Setup is a short checklist that opens right after the welcome letter when you create a workspace. It gets Halon ready to work on your stack, and the rest of the dashboard opens once it is done.
Only owners and admins go through setup. A teammate who joins while it is still open goes straight to the dashboard.
How setup works
Section titled “How setup works”The steps run in order, and each one opens once the steps above it are done. The list on the left shows where you are. On a phone it is a bar of segments at the top of the page.
- Open any step you already finished to look at it again or change your answer.
- Leave whenever you like. Setup keeps every answer and opens where you stopped, on any device. Until it is done, opening any other page of the dashboard brings you back to it. Chat is the exception, since that is where you meet Halon.
- Log out, at the top right, is there if you need to stop.
Every answer confirms itself with a toast. When the last step is done, the dashboard opens with “Setup is done. Welcome to Firefight.”
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| Your account | Nothing. Signing in made it, so it is already done |
| Choose Halon’s AI | Add your model provider’s API key, or pick another way Halon gets its AI where one is offered |
| Connect your stack | Go through each kind of tool and connect the ones your team uses |
| Who can do what | Choose what members can read and change in each connected tool |
| Meet Halon | Ask Halon a first question in Chat |
| Connect Slack | Connect it now, or choose Not now |
| Run a test incident | Declare a test incident, once Slack is connected |
Choose Halon’s AI
Section titled “Choose Halon’s AI”Halon investigates, answers and writes postmortems with a model from an AI provider. Choose how it gets one.
- Use my own AI account. Press Add account and fill in the same form as under Settings → Workspace. See AI accounts. Firefight checks the key with one short call, and Continue works once an account passes its check.
- Use Firefight’s AI. Offered on Firefight’s cloud. Halon runs on Firefight’s AI account, so you need no API key, and your workspace gets an amount of AI included every month, the trial too (included AI). The card under the choice shows how much of it is left and when it renews, with the credit packs you can buy if you need more (Firefight credits). Continue works while there is included AI or credit to spend.
- Use this server’s AI keys. Offered on a Firefight you run yourself, where the AI provider keys are already set up on the server it runs on, so you don’t add your own.
When only one way is offered, setup shows the AI accounts card straight away. You can change any of this later under Settings → Workspace.
Connect your stack
Section titled “Connect your stack”Setup goes through every kind of tool Firefight connects to, one at a time. Each says in a sentence or two what Halon can do with it and lists its tools. Connect opens the same connect dialog as Configure → Integrations, and you come back to the same kind of tool when it finishes. See Connect an integration.
You can connect several tools of one kind before you go on. A tool counts once Firefight’s check on it passes. A tool whose check failed shows Needs attention and Reconnect, and you can fix it or connect another.
Answer each kind of tool in one of two ways.
- Continue, once at least one tool of that kind is connected.
- We don’t use this, when your team has none.
Halon cannot investigate without your code, where your apps run and what watches them, so those three have no We don’t use this. Each needs a connected tool.
| Kind of tool | What Halon can do with it | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud and hosting | See what runs where, what was deployed and how it is doing. When you allow it, make changes there too | Yes |
| Observability | Search your logs, metrics, traces and errors to find what broke and when it started | Yes |
| Alerting and on-call | See which alerts fired and who is on call, so it can say who was paged and why | No |
| Status pages | Read what your status pages tell customers, and post and update incidents and maintenance there when you allow it | No |
| Product analytics | Check how many people an incident reached, what they saw and which feature flags changed | No |
| Databases | Read how your databases are set up and how they are doing, such as slow queries and connections | No |
| Code | Match an incident to the commits, pull requests and deploys that shipped just before it, and write a fix when you ask | Yes |
| CI | Read builds and test runs with their logs, and rerun one when you allow it | No |
| Coding agents | Hand a fix to your coding agent, which writes the change and opens the pull request | No |
| Issues | Read the tickets tied to an incident, and file the follow-up work there when you allow it | No |
| Knowledge | Read your runbooks and docs as context while it investigates | No |
| Custom | Use the tools you switch on from any MCP server you connect | No |
The row of kinds above the list shows which you answered. Click one to go back to it, for example to connect a second tool.
Who can do what
Section titled “Who can do what”Choose what people in your workspace can ask Halon to look at or change in each tool you connected. Admins can always do everything.
Each connected tool has a row with two dropdowns, Members can read and Members can change. Each offers Everyone, Nobody and Choose people…. Reads start on Everyone and changes on Nobody, so if that suits your team you change nothing. A choice saves as soon as you make it, with a message saying so, and changes always follow your approval rules. If you are the only one in the workspace so far, or everyone is an admin, the step says your choices apply to the people you invite later.
The same table is under Gateway → Permissions, where you can change it any time. See What members can do in each tool. Then press Continue. If nothing is connected yet, the step says there is nothing to choose and links back to Connect your stack.
Meet Halon
Section titled “Meet Halon”Ask Halon opens Chat with a first question already in the box, built from where your apps run and the databases you connected, such as “What runs where in my stack across Northflank?”. Send it, or ask your own. This step is required, and it is done once Halon has answered.
A banner above the chat keeps track. Once Halon has answered, it says so and offers Back to setup.
If Halon cannot answer yet, for example because its AI model is not fully set up, this step says why and Ask Halon stays disabled. Open Choose Halon’s AI in the list to fix it.
Connect Slack
Section titled “Connect Slack”Firefight runs each incident in its own Slack channel. Connect Slack installs Firefight in your Slack workspace, the same way as described in Creating a workspace, and brings you back to setup.
Not now finishes setup without Slack. The dashboard opens, every page shows a Connect Slack to run incidents banner, and Declare incident stays disabled with “Connect Slack first to run incidents.” until you connect it. Once you do, the dashboard offers whoever created the workspace a test incident.
Run a test incident
Section titled “Run a test incident”With Slack connected, the last step is a test incident. It runs like a real one in its own channel and is not counted in your metrics. The step lists the three things you will do with it: declare it, work it in its channel, and resolve it.
Press Declare a test incident. The declare form opens already filled in, with the name “Test incident: checkout is slow”, your least urgent severity and a summary saying it is a test, so pressing Declare is enough. You can change any of it first. A field your workspace added to the declare form and made required still needs an answer. Setup is done, and the new incident opens. Firefight posts a short guide in the incident’s channel, one step at a time. See The guide in the channel.