This walkthrough takes you from no account to a completed AI review on a real pull request in about ten minutes. You don't need to install the Marketplace extension first, and you don't need a credit card. Running a review during setup is optional — if you don't have a pull request handy, skip it and ADO Pilot reviews your next one automatically.

{% callout type="tip" title="Start here" %}
Open [**adopilot.dev**](https://adopilot.dev) in a new tab and click **Get Started Free**. That opens the ADO Pilot app, where the signup form on the **Get Started** tab is the first step — everything below walks through what the wizard asks for next.
{% /callout %}

Before you start, have these ready:

- An Azure DevOps Services organization. To watch a review run during setup, have an open pull request in it ready — this is optional, and you can skip it and let your next PR trigger the first review.
- A personal access token (PAT) for that organization with the scopes listed in [Creating a personal access token](../connecting-ado/creating-a-pat.md). If you don't have one yet, create it now — the wizard asks for it in step two.

{% steps %}

### Step 1 — Sign up

Go to `https://adopilot.dev` and click **Get Started Free**. It opens the ADO Pilot app, where the landing page splits in two: a product overview on the left, and an auth card with **Get Started** and **Sign In** tabs on the right. **Get Started** is selected by default.

1. Enter your work email in the **you@company.com** field.
2. Enter a password (minimum twelve characters) in the **At least 12 characters** field.
3. Tick **I agree to the Terms of Service** — you can't create your account until you do. If you click **Create Account** first, ADO Pilot prompts you to accept the Terms before continuing.
4. Click **Create Account**.

The wizard redirects to a five-step onboarding flow that opens on **Connect to Azure DevOps** (the wizard sidebar labels this Step 2 of 5 — Step 1 is the signup you just completed).

### Step 2 — Connect to Azure DevOps

On the **Connect to Azure DevOps** card, choose **Personal Access Token** and paste credentials.

1. Click **Personal Access Token**.
2. Paste your PAT into the **Paste your PAT here** field.
3. Under **Your first review**, choose how to start:
   - **Run my first review now** (default) — paste the full URL of an open pull request into the **Pull Request URL** field (for example, `https://dev.azure.com/org/project/_git/repo/pullrequest/42`).
   - **Skip for now** — enter your organization name instead (for example, `contoso`). No PR is needed now; ADO Pilot reviews your next pull request automatically once setup finishes.
4. Click **Connect & Continue**.

The wizard validates the PAT and provisions a tenant for your organization, including creating service hook subscriptions in your Azure DevOps projects. If you supplied a PR, it also starts a first review against it. On success it advances to step three.

If the PAT is missing a scope or has expired, you'll see a specific error. See [Troubleshooting PAT errors](../troubleshooting/pat-scope-errors.md) for the resolution for each error code.

### Step 3 — Configure repositories

By this point, service hook subscriptions are usually already active in your Azure DevOps projects — they were created during provisioning in Step 2 — and future pull requests will trigger reviews automatically. In rare cases, subscription creation can fail with a permission error even though the rest of setup succeeded; if reviews never start on a later pull request, see [Reviews never started: service-hook permission error](../troubleshooting/service-hook-permissions.md).

If you started a review in step two, this card is titled **Your first review** and runs that review in the background while you confirm settings. If you skipped it, the card is titled **Configure repositories** and confirms that your next pull request is reviewed automatically — there's nothing else to start now.

Click **Continue** to accept the defaults — all repositories enabled, default branch filters, default exclusion patterns. This step saves your per-repository settings.

### Step 4 — Choose a plan (or skip)

The **Select a plan** card shows the paid tiers side by side. To stay on the free trial, click **Continue with N free credits**, where `N` is your remaining trial allowance. To start a paid plan now, pick one and follow the Stripe checkout flow.

{% callout type="info" title="Two-factor authentication is not required for this step" %}
Picking a plan here does not require two-factor authentication — account security settings aren't available until onboarding finishes, so there's nothing to enroll yet. Once your tenant is set up, opening the Stripe billing portal, changing the overage cap, or converting a trial to a paid plan early from the dashboard will ask an org admin to recently re-confirm their identity (a "step-up" check): a fresh authenticator code if they have two-factor authentication enrolled in **Settings → Security**, their account password if they sign in with a password, or a one-time code we email to their current address if they sign in without a password (a magic link, an email code, or **Sign in with Microsoft**). Two-factor authentication is not required for any of this. See [Step-up re-authentication](../trust/account-security.md#step-up-re-authentication) for details.
{% /callout %}

The free-trial path does not collect payment details. Trial credits are consumed identically to paid credits.

### Step 5 — You're all set

The final card displays **You're all set!**. At this point:

- Your tenant is provisioned in ADO Pilot.
- Service hooks are installed in the Azure DevOps projects you selected.
- If you started a first review, it's either complete or running in the background.

If you supplied a PR in step two, open it and watch the PR-level summary comment progress from **review queued** to **review in progress** to a final **PASS**, **ADVISORY**, or **FAIL** verdict with a findings summary. Inline comments arrive once the review is complete. If you skipped the first review, open or update any pull request in a monitored repository — the review starts automatically within a few seconds.

{% /steps %}

## What to do next

- **Make AI review a required check.** Add the `ai-pr-review` status check (genre `adopilot`) as a branch policy in Azure DevOps to gate merges on review outcome. See [Setting AI review as a required PR check](../configuring/required-status-check.md).
- **Tune what gets reviewed.** Add or adjust file exclusion patterns, branch filters, and per-repository toggles in the management portal. See [Settings hierarchy](../configuring/settings-hierarchy.md).
- **Install the Marketplace extension.** Optional. Adds a **Run AI Review** button to the PR action menu and a settings hub with connection health status and a manual review trigger inside Azure DevOps. See [Installing the extension](installing-the-extension.md).

{% callout type="tip" title="Use the wizard PR for testing" %}
The pull request you point the wizard at is a real PR in your organization and the review it runs is real — comments will land on it. Pick a draft PR or a low-stakes PR for the first run if you don't want production reviewers to see the review thread.
{% /callout %}