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Your First Environment

Environments in SixDegree are isolated workspaces where you can discover entities, configure integrations, and chat with AI. Let's create your first one.

What is an Environment?​

An environment is a completely isolated workspace with its own set of resources. Each environment is independent and contains:

  • Entity Ontology: Your knowledge graph of discovered entities and relationships
  • Molecules: Configured discovery integrations (GitHub, AWS, Kubernetes, etc.)
  • MCP Tools: Model Context Protocol endpoints and available tools
  • Chat Conversations: AI chat history and context
  • Users: Access control and permissions for who can view and manage the environment
  • AI Model Settings: Which AI models are available and configured
  • Widgets: Custom visualizations and renderers
  • API Tokens: Environment-specific authentication tokens

Complete Isolation​

Environments are completely isolated from each other:

  • Entities discovered in one environment do not appear in others
  • Chat conversations are environment-specific
  • Users must be explicitly granted access to each environment
  • Configuration changes only affect the specific environment

Common Use Cases​

  • Separate by lifecycle: Production, staging, and development environments
  • Separate by team: Engineering, platform, security teams each have their own environment
  • Separate by project: Different products or applications in isolated environments
  • Separate by customer: Multi-tenant scenarios where each customer gets their own environment

Creating an Environment​

When you first log in to the SixDegree Dashboard with an active subscription, you'll be prompted to create your first environment.

Environment Name:

  • Use a technical identifier like my-first-env, production, or dev-team
  • Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens
  • Think of it as a unique identifier (like a slug or hostname)
  • No spaces or special characters

Example names:

  • my-first-env
  • production
  • staging
  • dev-sandbox
  • team-platform

Once created, you'll be redirected to your environment's dashboard.

Environment Dashboard​

Once created, your environment dashboard displays:

  • Entity Ontology: Visual representation of discovered entities and their relationships
  • Chat Interface: AI assistant with context about your environment
  • Settings: Environment configuration and integrations

Next: Configure Integrations​

An empty environment isn't very useful. Let's add some integrations to start discovering entities:

  1. Add a Molecule: Install discovery plugins to find entities from external services like GitHub, GitLab, or Docker
  2. Configure MCP Endpoints: Connect external Model Context Protocol servers to give your AI more tools
  3. Start Discovery: Run discovery to populate your entity ontology

See the Integrations section for detailed guides on setting up specific integrations.

Switching Environments​

Use the environment selector in the top navigation bar to switch between environments.

Environment Settings​

Access environment settings to configure:

  • Name: Update environment identifier
  • AI Models: Choose which AI models to use (GPT-4, Claude, etc.)
  • MCP Endpoints: Manage Model Context Protocol integrations
  • Molecules: Configure discovery plugins
  • Access Control: Manage who can access this environment (organization features)

Multi-Environment Access​

Users can be members of multiple environments simultaneously, with different roles and capabilities in each:

Different Roles per Environment​

A user might be:

  • Admin in their team's development environment
  • Member (read-only) in the production environment
  • Admin in their personal sandbox environment
  • No access to other teams' environments

Environment-Specific Views​

When you switch environments, you see completely different data:

  • Different entity ontology and discovered resources
  • Different chat history
  • Different available molecules and tools
  • Different team members with access

Organization Environments​

If you're part of an organization:

  • Admin users can create, edit, and delete environments
  • Member users can access environments they're invited to
  • Environments can be shared across your team
  • Access permissions are managed per environment

Deleting an Environment​

warning

Deleting an environment is permanent and cannot be undone. All entities, chat history, and configurations will be lost.

  1. Navigate to Environment Settings
  2. Scroll to the Danger Zone
  3. Click Delete Environment
  4. Confirm by typing the environment name

Next Steps​

Now that you have an environment:

Troubleshooting​

Can't Create Environment​

  • Check your subscription plan - free plans may have limits on number of environments
  • Ensure you have sufficient permissions in your organization

Environment Not Showing​

  • Refresh your dashboard
  • Try switching environments using the environment selector
  • Check that you're logged in with the correct account

Performance Issues​

  • Large environments with many entities may take time to load
  • Consider splitting very large environments into smaller, focused ones
  • Contact support for enterprise scaling options