Quickstart

This guide walks you through creating your account, setting up your organization, and getting your workspace ready. It takes about five minutes.

Sign up

Go to cortexone.rival.io/auth/signup to create your account.

You can sign up with:

• Email and password
• Google
• GitHub

Choose whichever is most convenient for your workflow.

If you use email and password, choose a strong password. Your signup email becomes your permanent login identifier and cannot be changed after account creation, so use one you’ll have long-term access to.

Create your organization

Immediately after signup, you’ll be prompted to create an organization before you can access the dashboard.

This is required - the organization is your workspace on Rival, and everything you build lives inside it.

Organization name

This is the most important field.

It appears in your tool URLs and marketplace listings, for example:

cortexone.rival.io/your-org-name/

Choose a name that reflects your project or company. Avoid placeholder names like test or myorg1 - the name becomes a part of your public identity on the platform.

Bio

A short description of what your organization does.

This appears on your public profile when you publish tools to the marketplace. It’s optional, but recommended if you plan to list tools publicly.

Social links

You can add links such as:

• GitHub
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Additional Link

These are optional, but help others trust and discover your work in the marketplace.

Verify your phone to unlock welcome credits

After your organization is created, verify your phone number to receive $10 as welcome credits.

These credits let you:

• Test your tools
• Run executions
• Try tools from the marketplace

This can be done while creating the organization or afterwards by following these steps:

Go to Workspace Settings → Organization, enter your phone number, and complete SMS verification.

Tip

Phone verification is also required to participate in the referral program. Verifying early ensures you’re eligible as soon as you start sharing your referral link.

How Rival is structured - A tour of the platform

Before you start building, let’s understand how Rival is organized. Everything you do happens inside an organization - this is your workspace.

Inside an organization, you can:

• Invite members
• Create teams
• Build and manage tools
• Upload and reuse assets
• Control access and permissions

You can be part of multiple organizations, but you can only own one.

Teams (optional but useful)

Teams help organize people and tools around specific projects.

For example, you might have:

• An Automation team
• An AI tools team
• A Data processing team

Teams become more useful as your workspace grows, but you don’t need them to get started.

What a tool actually is

A tool is the core unit of work on Rival.

It’s not just code - it’s something that can be executed.

A tool can be:

• A function (small program for a specific task)
• An MCP server (structured capability provider)
• A Storm tool (for tagging and classification)

Each tool defines:

• What it does
• What inputs it accepts
• What output it returns

Once created, it becomes something you can run, share, or expose via API.

How tools run

When you run a tool, Rival handles everything behind the scenes.

You can execute tools in two ways:

• Directly from the Rival interface
• Programmatically using API keys or cURL

Under the hood:

1. Your request is sent to the execution layer
2. Rival selects the fastest available compute
3. The tool runs securely in an isolated environment
4. Results are returned to you

You don’t manage servers, scaling, or infrastructure - Rival handles it automatically.

Note

All executions are routed dynamically to optimize performance and cost. You don’t need to choose where your code runs.

Reusing data with digital assets

If your tools need files or datasets, you don’t have to re-upload them every time.

Rival provides an option called Digital Assets, which let you upload once and reuse across tools.

Examples include:

• Images
• Datasets
• Documents
• Configuration files

Each asset gets a reference link that your tools can use directly. This makes workflows cleaner and avoids duplication.

Controlling access and permissions

Rival uses role-based access to control what people can do inside your organization.

Available roles include:

• Owner
• Admin
• Viewer
• Editor
• Member
• Executor

This ensures:

• Sensitive tools stay protected
• Teams only access what they need
• Collaboration remains structured

You can adjust roles as your team grows.

How you’ll typically use Rival

Most users follow a simple flow:

1. Create a tool
2. Run it with test inputs
3. View results in Executions
4. Integrate it using API keys
5. (Optional) Publish it to the marketplace

From there, you can:

• Automate workflows
• Build internal tools
• Create APIs
• Share tools publicly
• Monetize usage

Tip

Think of Rival as a runtime for your logic. You define what should happen - Rival handles how it runs.

Common use cases

Here are a few ways people typically use Rival:

Automating repetitive tasks

• Generating reports
• Processing documents
• Converting files

Building AI utilities

• Summarizers
• Content generators
• Document analyzers

Internal team tools

• Workflow automation
• Support processing
• Data pipelines

Publishing and monetizing tools

• APIs for external users
• Paid utilities
• Reusable services

Experimenting and prototyping

Because you start with credits, you can test ideas quickly without setting up infrastructure.

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What to do next

Now that you understand how Rival works, your next step should be practical:

• Create your first tool
• Run it with a simple input
• Inspect the execution

Everything else - APIs, scaling, monetization - builds on that foundation.

Tip

Don’t try to build something complex first. Start small, get one tool working end-to-end, then iterate.