Getting Started

OpenCauldron is an AI media generation studio for teams. This guide walks you through the first things to do after the app is running: confirming your workspace, bringing in teammates, organizing work into brands, and generating your first asset.

If OpenCauldron isn’t running yet, start with Installation first.

Sign in

Navigate to your OpenCauldron instance and click Sign in with Google. Authentication is handled by Google OAuth — you’ll need a Google account that matches any domain restriction your admin has configured.

After signing in, you land on Home (/overview). The workspace name appears at the top of the sidebar. If you see “No studio yet,” you aren’t a member of any workspace — ask an admin to invite you.

Your workspace

A workspace is the top-level boundary for your team. Everyone you invite, every brand you create, and every asset generated lives inside one workspace. The workspace name is shown in the sidebar header.

Workspace roles control what members can do:

Role	What they can do
owner	Full control: manage members, delete the workspace, grant any role
admin	Manage members and brands; invite teammates
member	Generate assets and view shared content

You are the owner of any workspace you created. Teammates you invite are member by default unless you assign a different role.

Invite teammates

Only owner and admin members can invite teammates.

Workspace member management is available via the API at POST /api/workspaces/{id}/members. Pass the teammate’s email and the desired role (member or admin). If the email belongs to an existing user they gain access immediately; if not, a user record is created for that email and they gain access when they sign in.

Note

A dedicated Members settings page is in development. Until it ships, use the API or ask your instance administrator.

Note

Brand-level roles — brand_manager, creator, and viewer — are separate from workspace roles. You assign those when adding teammates to a specific brand. See Brands for details.

Create a brand

A brand is how you organize work within your workspace. Each brand has its own member list, generation settings (Brand Kit), and approval workflow. You must be owner or admin to create one.

1. Click Add brand at the bottom of the sidebar’s brand list, or navigate to Brands and click New brand.
2. Enter a name (required) and choose a color for the brand label.
3. Confirm. The brand is created and you become its first brand_manager.

The brand now appears in your sidebar. Other workspace members won’t see it until you add them as brand members.

Note

Your Personal brand is created automatically when you first sign in. It’s private to you and works as a personal scratch space. It doesn’t have an approval workflow or shared members.

Generate your first asset

Click Create at the top of the sidebar — this navigates to the Generate page (/generate).

On the Generate page:

1. Choose a model from the model selector. Image models (Flux, Imagen, Ideogram, Recraft, etc.) and video models (Veo, Runway, Kling, etc.) are listed separately.
2. Type a prompt in the text field.
3. Select a brand from the Brand selector. Choose the brand you created, or leave it on Personal to keep the asset in your private space.
4. Click Generate.

Image generations complete synchronously — you see the result in seconds. Video generations are submitted as background jobs; the status updates when the job finishes.

When generation completes, the asset is saved with status: "draft". It’s visible to you (and brand managers if you tagged it with a brand) but not yet submitted for approval.

For more on model options, aspect ratios, negative prompts, and advanced parameters, see Generation Parameters.

Find your asset in Library

Navigate to Library in the sidebar. Library shows every asset you’ve generated or uploaded, in reverse chronological order.

Your new asset appears at the top of the grid. Each card shows a thumbnail, the brand it belongs to, and its current status.

To filter what you see:

• Use the Brand filter to show only assets from a specific brand.
• Use the Status filter to show only draft assets.
• Use the search field to match against the original prompt.

Click any asset to open the detail panel. The panel shows the prompt, model, parameters, and metadata. From here you can:

• Edit brand tags
• Add freeform tags
• Open the Thread tab to leave a note or start a conversation with your team (see Threads)
• Open the asset in Gallery and click Submit for review if it’s tagged with a brand that has an approval workflow (see Review)
• Download or delete the asset

Next steps

Once you have your first asset, here’s where to go next:

• Set up your brand kit — Add a prompt prefix/suffix, banned terms, and a default LoRA to shape every generation in the brand. See Brands.
• Organize with campaigns — Group assets for a specific project or launch. See Campaigns.
• Review and approve — Submit assets for approval and manage the review queue. See Review.
• Explore the Activity feed — Track generations, approvals, and team events. See Activity.