> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mentionlab.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Quickstart

> Create your first project and run your first AI brand analysis

From a fresh signup to your first results. Budget about ten minutes of setup, plus however long the
first run takes.

## Prerequisites

* A MentionLab account. [Sign up here](https://app.mentionlab.io) if you haven't already — you'll
  need to verify your email before you can sign in.
* A brand or product you want to monitor across AI platforms.

***

## Set up your first project

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create or join an organization">
    After signing in for the first time you're asked to **Create Organization** or **Join
    Organization**.

    Creating one takes a name (typically your company). Joining is invitation-only — share your email
    with an admin of the organization, then click **Check access** once they've added you.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Start the project wizard">
    On an organization with no projects, click **Create a project**. Otherwise use **New project** from
    the project switcher in the top navigation bar.

    The wizard has four steps: **Website**, **Profile**, **Prompts**, **Schedule**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Step 1 — Website">
    Enter the domain you want monitored, e.g. `acme.com`. MentionLab analyses the homepage and product
    pages to detect your industry, competitors and prompt ideas.

    Under **Advanced** there's one optional field, **Prompt language**, which forces the generated
    prompts into a specific language. Leave it blank to mirror the website's own language.

    Click **Analyze**, or **Skip and set up manually** to fill everything in by hand.

    <Tip>
      This analysis is what makes the next two steps useful — it pre-fills your competitors and drafts
      your prompts. Skipping it means starting from a blank project.
    </Tip>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Step 2 — Profile">
    Confirm what the analysis found:

    * **Project name** — the only required field in the whole wizard
    * **Industry**
    * **Description**
    * **Competitors** — pre-filled from the analysis. Add, edit or remove them, and give each one
      **aliases** if it's known by more than one name

    <Note>
      Aliases are never auto-suggested — anything you want matched has to be typed in deliberately.
    </Note>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Step 3 — Prompts">
    Pick from the drafted suggestions, or write your own with **Write a custom prompt**.

    Each prompt runs in its own country. Set the default **Country** at the top, then click any prompt's
    country pill to override it individually.

    <Warning>
      Changing the **Country** select rewrites the country on **every** already-selected prompt. Set your
      default first, then do per-prompt overrides.
    </Warning>

    You can continue with zero prompts and add them later from project settings.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Step 4 — Schedule">
    Two cards:

    **Schedule** — a **Recurring Interval** of Manual, Daily, Weekly, Biweekly or Monthly, plus the time
    and timezone. A preview shows the schedule in plain English and the next five run dates.

    **Execution** —

    * **AI Models** — one is selected by default; click **Show more models** for the rest. Availability
      varies by country, see [Models Availability](/guides/models-availability).
    * **Iterations** — how many times each prompt runs per execution, from 1 to 15.

    Above the buttons you'll see **Estimated per run** in tokens, broken down as
    prompts × models × iterations.

    <Warning>
      More models and higher iteration counts give better coverage but consume tokens faster. Start
      conservatively.
    </Warning>

    Click **Create project**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Run your first analysis">
    **Nothing runs automatically yet.** Every new project is created with its recurrence **paused**,
    whatever schedule you chose. You have two options:

    * **Run now** — go to **Project settings → Queries → All queries** and click **Launch analysis**.
      Pick the number of runs and the models, and confirm.
    * **Start the schedule** — go to **Project settings → General** and click **Resume** on the
      Recurrence card. The first scheduled run fires at the next slot.

    <Check>
      Once a job is running, an **Analysis in progress** card appears in the sidebar with live progress.
      Click it to open the Jobs page.
    </Check>
  </Step>
</Steps>

***

## View your results

Once the first analysis completes:

1. **Overview** — your mention rate, entity ranking, share of voice and top cited sources at a
   glance.
2. **Queries** — per-query results, and the full text of every individual AI response.
3. **Sources** — which websites the AI platforms cite about your category.
4. **Competitors** — head-to-head comparison against every other brand detected.

<Tip>
  See the [Dashboard guide](/guides/dashboard) for a walkthrough of every card on the Overview page.
</Tip>

***

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Understand your dashboard" icon="gauge" href="/guides/dashboard">
    Learn what every card and chart means.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Competitors & Brands" icon="building" href="/guides/competitors-and-brands">
    Flag competitors, add aliases, and group your entities.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Organize with tags" icon="tags" href="/guides/queries-and-tags">
    Group your queries for better segmentation.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Learn the metrics" icon="chart-bar" href="/guides/metrics-glossary">
    Understand every metric MentionLab calculates.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>