Onboarding

When you first sign in at app.engram.page, Engram walks you through a short onboarding wizard before opening your vault. The wizard exists because Engram requires Terms acceptance and an active subscription state before vault endpoints are reachable.

What the wizard covers

The wizard is two steps:

1. Agreement — accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Logged in the server-side user_agreements table against the current CURRENT_TOS_VERSION.
2. Billing — pick a plan and complete checkout through Paddle (or pick Free, which skips Paddle entirely). See Billing → Tiers for what each tier covers.

When both steps are complete, you’re handed off to the vault browser.

Why it gates vault access

The backend wraps /api/notes, /api/search, and /api/folders behind a RequireOnboarding plug that verifies:

• Latest Terms have been accepted by this user
• Subscription is in good standing (or self-host, which bypasses this check entirely)

If either check fails, the API returns 403 and the web app redirects back into the wizard. This means you can’t accidentally get into a broken half-onboarded state — the gate either lets you through or gives you the screen that resolves the missing step.

Skipping the wizard (self-host)

On self-host, billing is off by default (no PADDLE_API_KEY → config :engram, :billing_enabled is false). The wizard short- circuits past the plan-choice step. You’ll still accept Terms once.

Re-running the wizard

You can’t manually re-run it — once accepted, you’re past it. If Terms change, Engram bumps the version server-side and the next API call returns 403; the app re-renders the Terms acceptance step only. Plan changes happen on the Billing page, not in the wizard.