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Installation ​

Installing GuideSail on Your App ​

Before your users can see any guides, you need to add a small script to your app. This is a one-time setup — once it's in, all guides you publish will work automatically.

What you'll need ​

  • Your API key — found in your GuideSail dashboard at getguidesail.com/dashboard/import.
  • A visitor ID (optional) — a unique identifier for each of your users (e.g. their user ID from your database). Used to track once-only guides and analytics. If omitted, GuideSail assigns an anonymous ID automatically.

Add this to your app's HTML, ideally just before </body>:

html
<!-- Add this script tag to your HTML -->
<script type="module">
  import guidesail from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/guidesail@^1.4.0/guidesail.mjs';
  guidesail.sail('YOUR_API_KEY');
</script>

Option B — Classic script tag ​

If your setup doesn't support ES modules:

html
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/guidesail@^1.4.0/dist/guidesail.min.js"></script>
<script>
  guidesail.sail('YOUR_API_KEY');
</script>

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key from your dashboard. Both snippets are pre-filled with your key at getguidesail.com/dashboard/import.

Setting the visitor ID ​

Pass your logged-in user's ID as the second argument so GuideSail can track once-only guides per user:

js
guidesail.sail('YOUR_API_KEY', 'user-123');

If you need to set or clear the visitor after the page loads (e.g. after login/logout):

js
guidesail.setVisitor('user-123');  // after login
guidesail.unsetVisitor();          // after logout

Verifying the installation ​

Open the browser console on your page and look for a message that says "GuideSail is active". If you see it, the install worked.

How to open the console:

  • Keyboard shortcut: Press F12 on Windows, or Cmd + Option + J on Mac. This opens the console directly.
  • Right-click method: Right-click anywhere on your page → click Inspect → click the Console tab at the top of the panel that opens.

You can also visit a page with a published automatic guide — it should appear within a few seconds.

If a guide doesn't appear, see [[../Support/Troubleshooting]].