Docs · Getting started

Quickstart

Three steps, under two minutes. Sign up, paste the script tag into your app's <head>, and publish your first changelog entry.

1. Create your workspace

Sign in with a magic link at showkit.dev/login. You'll be asked for a workspace slug — pick something short and lowercase like acme. That slug becomes part of two URLs:

Your public changelog page: showkit.dev/c/acme
The data-workspace value you'll pass to the embed below

The free tier requires no credit card — you can ship today.

2. Install the widget

Paste this snippet into the <head> of any page where you want the bell to appear. Replace acme with your slug.

<script
  src="https://showkit.dev/api/widget/v1.js"
  data-workspace="acme"
  defer
></script>

That's it. A bell button appears in the bottom-right of the page, badged with the count of unread entries. The widget is Shadow-DOM isolated, so it can't pick up or leak your site's CSS.

Want to customize position or theme? See Configuration for all data-* attributes. Using Next.js, Astro, or Rails? See Framework recipes.

3. Publish your first entry

Open your dashboard at showkit.dev/dashboard and click New entry. You have two options:

Write it by hand — markdown editor with live preview. Pick a tag (Feature, Improvement, Fix), title, body, and hit Publish.
Draft from GitHub — connect your repo and we'll summarize the last batch of commits into a draft entry. You keep the funny bits, we'll keep the changelog coherent.

On publish, every visitor's bell badges with a new-entry indicator, your RSS / Atom / JSON feeds update, and any email subscribers get a digest.

4. Verify it's working

Load your site in a fresh tab. You should see:

A bell button in the bottom-right corner
A small dot badge on the bell (the new-entry indicator)
Clicking the bell opens a popover with your entry

If the bell doesn't render, check Troubleshooting — the usual culprits are a strict CSP, a typo in data-workspace, or an ad-blocker grabbing the script.