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Set up your sponsorship

A 15-minute walkthrough from "I want to evaluate Steward for my team" to "the App is installed, the subscription is active, and I know where to look when something needs attention."

Background reading: Tiers + credits — this guide assumes you've picked a tier or are at least narrowed to two.

Before you start

You need:

  • A GitHub organization where you have admin permission (you need that to install GitHub Apps on the org's repos).
  • A credit card for any paid tier. Community is $0; the rest charge on first installation.
  • 15 minutes.

You don't need:

  • A signed Master Services Agreement (the Terms of Service cover everything up to Business; Business customers can request an MSA review separately).
  • A pre-existing governance.pxf on any of the repos. You can land the App with zero governance and Steward will start using its baseline defaults.

1. Sign in to Steward {#sign-in}

Go to steward-dev.ai and click Sign in with GitHub. Steward's OAuth flow asks for your identity (no repo access yet — that comes in step 2).

You'll land on /app. With no installations yet, the dashboard shows the FleetCard's empty state with a single CTA: Install Steward on a repo. Don't click it yet — for a sponsor, the App needs to go on the org, not on individual repos.

2. Install the App on your organisation

Click your avatar → Manage installations, or go to /api/installations/start directly. GitHub takes over:

  1. Choose the account to install on. Pick your organization (not your personal account).
  2. Repository access: pick All repositories or Only select repositories. For a sponsor evaluating Steward, "Only select" with 2–3 repos is the right starter — you can broaden later.
  3. Permissions review: read the requested permissions and click Install.

GitHub returns you to /app. The org's repos appear in the fleet table within a few seconds — the webhook delivery is what lights them up.

The /sponsor link in the nav goes live the moment Steward sees your org#read permission (i.e. once the installation sync finishes). If you don't see it, hard-refresh; if it still doesn't show, your installation may have failed — check Manage installations on GitHub and re-install if necessary.

3. Pick a tier {#pick-tier}

From /app, click into Sponsorships → Choose a tier, or jump to /pricing and pick from there. The signed-in checkout flow at /app/checkout pre-fills your billing email from your Steward profile.

  • Community is the default for new installations. No checkout step; you're already on it.
  • Pro / Team / Business route through Paddle for card-on-file + tax handling. Annual gives two months free (the Pro annual is $190 for 12 months instead of $228).

You'll get an email receipt + the dashboard updates to show the new tier within seconds.

4. Watch the first 24 hours

The first day is the most informative. What to watch:

The fleet view (/app)

The dimension pills (T/C/P/M/G) start populating as repo-wide evaluations finish. Each repo takes ~30 seconds to score on first install. By the end of the first hour, every covered repo should show at least one row of pills. If a repo's pills stay grey for hours, that repo isn't producing evaluations — usually because no PRs are landing.

Cross-reference with The fleet dashboard for column meanings.

Usage (/sponsor/usage)

Credit burn shows up here as PRs are evaluated. Day one is not a representative day — every recently-merged PR may trigger a backfill evaluation, so the burn rate will look inflated. By the third day the rate stabilises.

Don't panic if the burn shows you at 30% by mid-day one. Panic only if it's still climbing at the same rate on day three.

The PR comment

When a contributor opens or pushes a PR to a covered repo, Steward should post a verdict comment within seconds. If nothing happens:

  • Check the App is still installed and not suspended on the org.
  • Check the repo isn't archived (archived repos are read- only and Steward skips them).
  • Check the repo count against your tier — if you're over the cap, evaluations queue but don't enqueue.

5. Hand off the operator role

The maintainer-day-to-day surfaces (/app, /app/repos/<id>, /app/contributors) are different people's working surfaces from the sponsor's. If your sponsor is also a maintainer, you can keep both seats; if it's finance or compliance, point your engineering leads at:

The sponsor's recurring surfaces are /sponsor/usage (credit burn), /sponsor/audit (compliance trail — Team and above), and /sponsor/billing (subscription state).

What if I picked the wrong tier?

Upgrades take effect immediately and are pro-rated. Downgrades take effect at the next billing cycle (the current period's quota stays at the higher tier so you're not surprised by sudden Static-Only mode). See Changing tier and adding repos when that lands; meanwhile contact billing@steward-dev.ai for manual changes.

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