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Quick Start

This guide takes you from zero to a live cloud infrastructure pane on a web page. You will link a cloud account, create an access key, and embed a pane that displays real data from your cloud environment.

Time required: Under 10 minutes.

What you need:

  • A LightPane account (create one free)
  • An AWS account, GCP project, or Azure subscription you want to discover
  • A web page where you want to display the data (any HTML page will do)

LightPane uses read-only access to discover your cloud resources. It never modifies, creates, or deletes anything in your environment.

Deploy the LightPane CloudFormation template in your AWS account. This creates a read-only IAM role using the AWS managed SecurityAudit policy.

  1. Log in to app.lightpane.cloud
  2. Go to Cloud Accounts
  3. Click Link AWS Account
  4. Follow the instructions to deploy the CloudFormation template
  5. Paste the Role ARN back into LightPane

The template creates a role with an External ID that prevents confused deputy attacks. LightPane generates this ID — you don't need to create one.

Connect via Workload Identity Federation (WIF). This is the Google-recommended approach for cross-project access without service account keys.

  1. Log in to app.lightpane.cloud
  2. Go to Cloud Accounts
  3. Click Link GCP Project
  4. Follow the instructions to configure WIF in your project

Connect using a Service Principal with the Reader role.

  1. Log in to app.lightpane.cloud
  2. Go to Cloud Accounts
  3. Click Link Azure Subscription
  4. Follow the instructions to create the Service Principal

For detailed instructions, see Link Your Cloud Account.

Step 2: Create an Access Key

Access keys control what cloud data can be accessed and from where. You need one to embed panes or call the API.

  1. Go to Access Keys in your LightPane account
  2. Click Create New Key
  3. Choose:
    • Label: A name you'll recognise (e.g., "My status page")
    • Type: embed for web pages, api_key for scripts
    • Cloud account: Select the account you linked in Step 1
    • Expiry: Choose a duration
  4. Click Create
  5. Copy the token immediately — it is shown once and cannot be retrieved again
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For detailed instructions and constraint options, see Create an Access Key.

Step 3: Embed a Pane

Add these lines to any HTML page:

<!-- LightPane SDK -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.lightpane.cloud/sdk/v1/clouds-and-light.css">

<!-- Your access key -->
<script>
    var serviceDiscoveryConfig = {
        accessKey: 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE'
    };
</script>

<!-- Service request: discover EC2 instances -->
<script>
    var serviceDiscoveryRequests = serviceDiscoveryRequests || [];
    serviceDiscoveryRequests.push({
        service: 'ec2',
        provider: 'aws',
        region: 'eu-west-2',
        source: 'live',
        attributes: ['name', 'instance_id', 'instance_type', 'state', 'private_ip']
    });
</script>

<!-- This div will be replaced with a live data table -->
<div data-sd-service="ec2" data-sd-source="live"></div>

<!-- LightPane discovery engine (load at end of page) -->
<script src="https://cdn.lightpane.cloud/sdk/v1/sd-core.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.lightpane.cloud/sdk/v1/sd-fetch.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.lightpane.cloud/sdk/v1/sd-render.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.lightpane.cloud/sdk/v1/sd-format.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.lightpane.cloud/sdk/v1/sd-boot.js"></script>

Replace YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE with the token from Step 2. Open the page in a browser. You should see a table of EC2 instances from your AWS account.

For detailed instructions, see Embed Your First Pane.

What Next