Quick Start

Cloudillo applications are microfrontends that run inside the Cloudillo shell. The shell handles authentication, theming and navigation — your app just needs to initialize and start building.

import { getAppBus, createApiClient } from '@cloudillo/core'

const bus = getAppBus()
await bus.init('my-app')

// You now have: bus.idTag, bus.accessToken, bus.tnId, bus.roles, bus.darkMode

You never implement registration, login or token management — the shell provides all of that through the message bus.

Choose your path

Pick the type of app you’re building and follow the links to the most relevant guides:

Building a… Start with Then explore
Social app (posts, comments, reactions, follows) Getting Started Actions API, Common Patterns
Collaborative editor (real-time document editing) Getting Started CRDT Guide, WebSocket API
Data-driven app (structured collections, queries) Getting Started RTDB Guide, WebSocket API
React UI app (hooks, components) Getting Started React Library, React Components
File management (upload, share, variants) Common Patterns Files API, Shares API

Key concepts at a glance

  • idTag — DNS-based user identity (e.g. alice.cloudillo.net). Decouples identity from where data is stored.
  • Action tokens — Cryptographically signed events for social interactions: POST, CMNT, REACT, FLLW, CONN, FSHR.
  • Message bus — Communication channel between your app and the Cloudillo shell. Accessed via getAppBus().
  • Tenant — Data isolation boundary. Handled automatically by the client libraries — you rarely interact with it directly.

For more detail, see Key Concepts in the API overview.

Next steps