# What you need before you start

> A machine, a Tailscale account, a subscription to at least one agent, and a phone. Nothing else.

Four things, and you probably have three of them. Nothing on this list costs
anything beyond what you already pay — including the machine, if there is one
under your desk.

## 1. A machine you own

Any of these will do:

- a cheap VPS — Contabo, netcup, Hetzner, DigitalOcean; the smallest tier is
  enough to start;
- a box in your office;
- an old laptop with the lid shut;
- a Mac — a mini under the desk, or the laptop you are reading this on.

It needs to be **Debian or Ubuntu** (anything with `apt` and `systemd`) or
**macOS**, on Apple silicon or Intel. On Linux you need to be able to `ssh` into
it as a user who can run `sudo`; on a Mac, the install is run by the person
logged in at it. That is the whole requirement.

> [!NOTE]
> A machine with 2 GB of memory runs one or two agents. They spend most of
> their time waiting on a network, so this is less demanding than it sounds —
> but if you plan to run several at once on one box, give it 4 GB.

A Mac is a machine. The few things that are not the same are named on
[what the install does](https://beafk.app/docs/what-the-install-does.md), at the moment they
matter, rather than as a shopping-list footnote.

**We never touch your server's bill.** You bought it, your provider charges you,
and nothing in beafk can stop it, resize it or delete it.

## 2. A Tailscale account

[Tailscale](https://tailscale.com) is a free service that puts your devices on a
small private network of their own. beafk uses it so that your phone can reach
your machine **without opening a single port to the internet**. Linux puts the
package on during the walk; login is a second screen after that.

You need one thing: an account. The free tier covers this completely, and
signing up takes a minute.

There is no key to make and nothing to prepare. After the walk, a second
screen shows you a link, and a QR code of the same link; you open it on a
device you are signed in on, and the machine joins the network that device
belongs to. Your Tailscale credentials never touch beafk. If you would rather
set Tailscale up yourself first, press ⏎ at that login and the install carries
on with no address at all.

If you cannot finish that login on the device in front of you — a Tailscale
account behind a company sign-in, usually — press **k** at the same screen and
paste an [auth key](https://login.tailscale.com/admin/settings/keys) instead.

### On a Mac, you install the app yourself

Linux gets Tailscale from Tailscale's own signed repository, as a step of the
walk. A Mac does not: beafk looks for the app, and will not install a daemon
as a side effect on somebody's Mac.

The paste can come first. If the app is missing after the walk, the connect
screen mints
[Get Tailscale on the App Store](https://apps.apple.com/app/tailscale/id1475387142).
Homebrew is the other path, not the first: `brew install --cask tailscale`
then `open -a Tailscale`. Preparing the app first is still fine:

1. Get it from the App Store (or Homebrew) and open it.
2. Sign in to the account that owns **your** network — the tailnet your phone
   will be on.
3. Click the icon in the menu bar and **turn the switch on**, so it says
   Connected. Installed-but-off is the ordinary way a Mac never gets an
   address.

The same three things apply on the phone you will open the panel from:
install the app, sign in to that same account, turn it on.

The two tailnet-wide settings that no machine can turn on for itself, and the
one switch worth changing afterwards, are on
[your first machine](https://beafk.app/docs/your-first-machine.md), at the moment the install stops
to ask.

## 3. At least one agent subscription

beafk runs the real tools — Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Kimi Code — so you
sign in to them as yourself, on the plan you already have with their maker.
**One is enough to start.** You can add the others later, from your phone,
without touching the machine again, and having more than one is where a
[crew](https://beafk.app/docs/what-a-crew-is.md) starts to pay for itself.

Which four, who makes each, and what each signs in with:
[which agents beafk runs](https://beafk.app/docs/which-agents-beafk-runs.md).

## 4. A phone

That is the point of the thing. Any modern phone browser, with Tailscale
installed and signed in to the same network as the machine.

A laptop works exactly as well — the screens are just built phone-first.

## And an account here

A beafk cloud account, which is how the panel knows which machines are yours.
Your **first machine is free for seven days, with no card** — and the week does
not start until the machine actually connects, so signing up before you have one
costs you nothing. The terms of that week, and what a machine costs after it,
are in [what it costs](https://beafk.app/docs/what-it-costs.md).

Ready? [Your first machine](https://beafk.app/docs/your-first-machine.md) is three steps, one of
which is a line you paste — or go straight to
[connect a machine](https://beafk.app/login?return_to=/machines/connect).

---

beafk documentation · Start here · https://beafk.app/docs/what-you-need

In this section:
- What beafk is — https://beafk.app/docs/what-is-beafk.md
- What it costs — https://beafk.app/docs/what-it-costs.md
- What beafk does not do — https://beafk.app/docs/what-beafk-does-not-do.md
- Questions people ask — https://beafk.app/docs/questions-people-ask.md
- Moving from Cursor — https://beafk.app/docs/moving-from-cursor.md
- What you need before you start — https://beafk.app/docs/what-you-need.md (this page)

Every page, one line each: https://beafk.app/docs/llms.txt
All of it in one file: https://beafk.app/docs/llms-full.txt