Create your first admin

Payload's usual "create first user" screen is replaced by an invitation-based signup flow. On an empty database the plugin bootstraps that invitation for you, so there is nothing to configure.

What happens on a fresh database

1. You open /admin. You are not signed in, so Payload redirects to its login route — which the plugin has repointed to /admin/login-redirect, then on to /admin/login.
2. The login view counts users whose role equals users.defaultAdminRole (default "admin").
3. If that count is zero, the view creates an admin-invitations record with a random token and redirects you to /admin/signup?token=<token>.
4. You fill in the signup form. The token is validated against admin-invitations, and the new user is created with the admin role.

If an unused admin invitation already exists, the view reuses its token rather than creating another one.

Verifying your email in development

If you set emailVerification.sendOnSignUp: true (as the installation guide does), you cannot sign in until the address is verified. In development you typically have no real email transport, so log the URL instead:

emailVerification: {
  sendOnSignUp: true,
  autoSignInAfterVerification: true,
  async sendVerificationEmail({ user, url }) {
    console.log('Verify email for', user.email, url)
  },
},

After signing up, copy the logged URL and open it:

http://localhost:3000/api/auth/verify-email?token=…&callbackURL=/admin

You are verified, signed in, and redirected to the admin panel.

To skip this loop entirely while developing, set requireEmailVerification: false and sendOnSignUp: false.

Admin routes added by the plugin

The plugin sets admin.routes.login to /login-redirect and registers these views underneath your admin route:

Creating an admin without the UI

You can promote any user from a script or seed file using Payload's Local API:

import { getPayload } from '@/lib/payload'

const payload = await getPayload()

await payload.update({
  collection: 'users',
  where: { email: { equals: 'me@example.com' } },
  data: { role: ['admin'] },
})

role is a multi-select field (hasMany: true), so it takes an array.