Overview

Installing an ARK product takes about five minutes per product, plus the one-time work of creating a Supabase project and a Vercel project. This page explains what you'll be doing before you start clicking.

What you need before you start

Two free accounts. You can sign up for each in under a minute.

Account	What it's for	Link
Supabase	Holds your database and handles user logins	supabase.com
Vercel	Hosts your website and runs the code	vercel.com

You also need:

Your ARK license key, which we emailed you when you purchased. It looks like ARK-A1B2-C3D4-E5F6-G7H8.
Your fingerprinted code zip. Sign in to your dashboard, open the product, and click Download Your Code. Every zip is built uniquely for your account — the code is yours to keep.

How an ARK deployment fits together

Every ARK product is a website with a database behind it. You get two pieces, and you connect them once:

        Your code             Your hosting           Your data
   ┌────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐
   │  Downloaded    │ ──> │     Vercel      │ <─>│   Supabase   │
   │  ARK zip       │     │  (the website)  │    │ (the database)│
   └────────────────┘     └─────────────────┘    └──────────────┘

The zip you download from your dashboard is your copy of the source code. It's fingerprinted to you — nobody else has the same copy.
Vercel turns that code into a live website. Drag the unzipped folder onto vercel.com/new and it's live in minutes.
Supabase stores your data — users, contacts, messages, whatever the product manages. Your data lives in your Supabase project, not ours.

We never see your data. We never have access to your Vercel or Supabase. You own the whole stack.

How long this takes

Step	Time
Sign up for Supabase and Vercel	3 minutes (one-time)
Set up Supabase for one ARK product	2 minutes
Download the zip, deploy to Vercel	2 minutes
Run the database schema	1 minute
Total per product	~5 minutes

If you bought multiple ARK products, each additional product is faster because you can reuse the same Supabase project.

What the next pages cover

Setting Up Supabase — create a project, find the two values Vercel needs.
Setting Up Vercel — drag the unzipped code onto Vercel, paste the values, deploy.
Running the Database Schema — create the tables your product uses.
Environment Variables — the full list of values, where each one comes from.
Your First Login — the first account you create becomes the admin. We explain why.
Multi-Product Setup — how to share one Supabase project across several ARK products.
Verify Your Deployment — a checklist to confirm everything works.