MastriaDocs

Getting started

Mastria is the academy platform for developer-tool and data startups: courses, hands-on labs, and proof of business impact in one product. This guide covers how your academy goes live, how learners get in, and where everything else is documented.

Note

How these docs are written. Paths like Admin → Courses name a row in the admin sidebar; Admin → Settings → Outbound webhook names a card on that page. Bold text is something you can click or switch on; code is something you type, a URL, or a field name.

Your academy

Every academy is a branded, standalone site:

  • Its own address. You start on yourname.mastria.dev and can move to your own domain (learn.yourcompany.com) whenever you're ready. See Custom domains.
  • Your brand. Your logos, one brand color, your fonts and corners, set on Admin → Brand — or copied from your docs site in one paste (Match my docs reads Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Fern). From that one color the academy derives its whole palette in light and dark mode, and the same colors carry through to the sign-in email, link previews and certificate images. There is no CSS to write, and nothing breaks when the platform's design improves; when you want more, a Custom CSS page takes a stylesheet of your own. See Brand & appearance.
  • Public by default. Anyone can browse and read your courses without an account; signing in is only needed to track progress. When a course shouldn't be public, its settings can unlist it (link-only), hide it, or open it only to chosen account types, tags, or named accounts — see Course settings.

Tip

Zero-friction reading is deliberate: your academy is also top-of-funnel. A visitor who reads three lessons before signing in is a visitor who found the content worth it.

How learners sign in

Passwordless, via magic links: a learner enters their email, clicks the link we send, presses Continue on the page it opens, and they're in — back on the page they signed in from. No passwords to forget, nothing for your support team to reset. The "Check your email" page names the address the link went to, so a typo is one click to fix, and can send the link again (twice at most).

Note

The extra Continue click is deliberate. Mailbox link scanners open every link in an email before the reader does; landing on a page with a button, rather than signing in on the click itself, keeps a scanner from using up the sign-in link first.

The email a learner signs up with matters more than it looks: business emails automatically connect learners to their company, which is what powers per-account reporting later. And because work inboxes don't last forever, learners can add a confirmed recovery email on their profile — either address signs into the same account, so leaving the company never orphans progress or certificates. See Accounts & learners.

Getting set up

We create your academy on yourname.mastria.dev with you as its owner. Everything from there is self-serve, and the admin Dashboard walks you through it: a Set up your academy checklist with a button for each step, which ticks itself off as the work gets done and goes away once the essentials are in place.

  1. Create a course. Start blank, paste an outline, or begin from a template on Admin → Courses. You can also hand us existing content in any form; markdown is ideal. See Courses & content authoring.
  2. Publish it. Review & publish puts its lessons live and opens the course to learners. The step ticks once a course is on the home for everyone — a hidden, unlisted, or account-only course doesn't count, and the step says so.
  3. Make it yours. Your logo, brand color, and fonts on Admin → Brand. Paste your docs address and Match my docs starts from their look. The step ticks once a brand color or a logo is saved. See Brand & appearance.
  4. Share the academy link. The checklist has a copy button; the step is done when the first learner signs in.

Two more are optional, and also yours to do:

  • Invite a teammate on Admin → Team, as an owner, admin, or author. See Team.
  • Connect your domain on Admin → Settings → Domain: two DNS records, then Check DNS. See Custom domains.

The academy's name lives at the top of Admin → Settings: it shows in the header when there's no logo, in browser tabs, on certificates, and as the sender of the academy's emails.

Where's the dashboard?

On your domain. Some platforms send staff to a separate central dashboard site to manage their academies; Mastria's admin lives at /admin on the academy itself — learn.yourcompany.com/admin — so management travels with your domain, white-label included.

  • One sign-in for everyone. Staff use the same magic-link login as learners. A staff seat — an invitation from Admin → Team — is what unlocks the Admin button in the header; learners never see it.
  • More domains, same admin. Extra custom domains point at the same academy: add each on Admin → Settings → Domain. Nothing moves.
  • More academies, one source of truth. Running separate academies (say, customer training and partner certification)? With repo sync, the same course folders can feed both: your GitHub repo, not a dashboard, is where content is written, reviewed, and published.

What the platform does

Everything below is live today. Each line links to its own page.

  • Hands-on labs. SQL and Python run in the learner's browser — no VMs, no waiting — with automatic checks, authored feedback, hints, and an "Apply the solution" checkpoint so nobody stays stuck. Labs you already host elsewhere can be embedded and report results back. Lab authoring.
  • Quizzes. Practice questions in lesson markdown: four question types, code in questions and options, an explanation on every wrong option, and analytics that flag the questions worth a second look. Quizzes.
  • A real course player. Every lesson keeps the course outline in view; Complete and continue finishes a lesson in one click; lessons with labs or quizzes complete themselves when the work is done; resume follows the learner's latest activity. Progress & tracking.
  • Certificates and a learner profile. Public verification permalinks that never revoke, an evidence ledger on assessed certificates, Add to LinkedIn, and a My profile page with every certificate, a learning record, and a printable training history. Certificates.
  • Authoring tools. A single-screen course workspace: outline beside a markdown editor, ⌘K navigation, validation-gated publishing, course templates, a lesson library, version history with diffs and rollback, and GitHub repo sync so courses can live next to your code. Courses & content authoring.
  • A home that organizes itself. A featured course, topic chips, header search, an un-gameable New badge, catalogs and learning paths with pages that list them all — every mechanic arms itself as the shelf earns it, and you can take the wheel and compose the home yourself. Home & catalogs.
  • Content that stays true. Video transcripts, extracted claims, and scheduled reviews against your docs that point at the exact second a video no longer matches. Content freshness.
  • Reporting with receipts. A live dashboard where every number says how it is counted, per-account progress, and Impact: whether people who finish a course use your product more than coworkers who didn't. Dashboard & analytics.
  • Data out, on every tier. Signed webhooks, a metric ingest API, an accounts API, and CSV exports of every table. Integrations & exports.

Questions at any point: marc@mastria.dev — you'll get an answer from the person who builds the product.