CARTIE AI — Onboarding in 15 minutes

This is the literal checklist our first paying pilots run on day one. We publish it because most FinOps tools hide their onboarding behind "talk to sales" — we don't.

Total time: ~15 minutes · No payment required (every external key has a free tier).

Step 1 · Connect your AWS account (read-only · 3 min)

You need an IAM role with ReadOnlyAccess and Billing permissions. Nothing else.

# In your AWS console — IAM → Roles → Create role
# Trust: AWS account · 123456789012 (CARTIE)
# Permissions: AWS managed → "ReadOnlyAccess" + "AWSBillingReadOnlyAccess"
# Role name: cartie-readonly

Paste the role ARN at /integrations/aws in the app. We never see your credentials directly — we assume the role via STS.

Step 2 · Optional · ElectricityMaps key (carbon scope-2 live)

For real-time carbon-per-region data (otherwise we fall back to disclosed synthetic data).

1. Sign up at https://www.electricitymaps.com/free-tier
2. Click "Activate sandbox key" (or request 14-day trial for production data)
3. Paste at /integrations/electricity-maps

Free tier: 10,000 requests/month. We use ~3,000.

Step 3 · Optional · LaunchDarkly read-only key

For real upcoming-feature cost prediction.

1. Sign up at https://launchdarkly.com/start-trial/
2. Go to Organization settings → Authorization → Access tokens
3. Create token: name cartie-readonly, role Reader, service token OFF
4. Paste at /integrations/launchdarkly

Free tier: 1 environment, unlimited reads.

Step 4 · Optional · PostHog key

For real product-adoption curves on the Forward Cost Predictor.

1. Sign up at https://posthog.com/signup (US or EU cloud)
2. Profile → Personal API keys → Create
3. Permissions: Read on Insights + Events + Projects
4. Paste at /integrations/posthog (we'll auto-detect US vs EU)

Free tier: 1M events/month.

Step 5 · Run the first audit

Once at least step 1 is done, hit "Run audit" on /dashboard. You'll get:

• A complete cost-leak inventory with $-impact per finding
• The audit takes ~60 seconds (we crawl Cost Explorer + CloudWatch + tag inventory)
• Every finding has a downloadable JSON ledger showing the math

If you find at least 3× our annual fee in verifiable savings, congratulations — we've already paid for ourselves. If not, see our ROI Verification Pledge — we refund the unused portion.

What we don't ask for

• Write access to anything. We're read-only by default.
• Credit card for the audit. The audit is free; you decide afterward.
• A demo call. Run the platform yourself. Talk to us if and when you want.
• Per-customer percentages. Until we verify YOUR savings, we don't promise.

Verification endpoints (curl-able right now)

These are live, public, and unauthenticated:

• GET /api/algorithm-correctness/manifest — list of ground-truth math tests
• GET /api/pilot-activation/readiness-score — our own readiness as a vendor
• GET /api/multi-cloud/status — which clouds the platform supports right now
• GET /api/roi-pledge/current — versioned written commitments

Stuck on a step?

Email hello@cartieai.com with the step number and what you saw. No support tier, no ticket queue — the founder (Lakshmi Kiranmai Guduru) answers directly while we're in Beta.