Pick the level that matches what you already know. Each rung takes 5-30 minutes and leaves you with a real working result you can build on.
The learn/ path is a ladder. Each rung adds one concept on top of
the last. You don't have to climb every step — drop in at the level
that matches your background.
Answer the question that fits you. If two fit, pick the lower level —
the higher rungs will fly by once the lower ones are familiar.
| You are… | Start at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New to reverse proxies, tunnels, or self-hosting | Level 1 | One command, one HTTPS URL. The "wow" before the conceptual load. |
Comfortable with curl and docker run but new to asd |
Level 1 | Five minutes to a working tunnel; you'll skim Level 2 in three. |
| You've used Caddy / Traefik / nginx before and want the YAML version | Level 2 | Skip the zero-config tour and write a real manifest. |
| You're already running asd; you just need a new service exposed | Level 2 | The minimal manifest pattern you'll re-use everywhere. |
| You need multiple services on one host | Level 3 | One asd net apply per change, no port juggling. |
| You need dev + staging + prod side by side | Level 4 | ASD_ENV and per-env prefixes. |
| You just need to put your existing service behind login | Level 5 | Two lines of YAML; no proxy code. |
| The declarative options aren't enough for your case | Level 6 | responseHeaders, authBypassPaths, raw Caddy JSON. |
| You want to extend asd itself | Level 7 | Write an asd module in TypeScript. |
Then the ladder isn't what you want — reference is:
reference/net-manifest or reference/asd-yaml.reference/cli/index (full surface) or reference/cli/starter (Top 7).cookbook/tunnel-a-dev-server, cookbook/put-an-api-behind-sso, cookbook/debug-a-broken-route, and others.concepts, five paragraphs.Every learn page has the same shape so you can scan a level you've
never seen and know where to look:
| Block | What's in it |
|---|---|
| You need | Prereqs + a skip-ahead link if you already know this rung |
| Setup | What we're going to build, in 2-3 sentences |
| Recipe | The minimal copy-pasteable snippet |
| Result | How to verify it worked |
| Why it works | One paragraph for the curious; skippable |
| What's next | One primary next step + optional side quests |
If you're an advanced reader, you can read just the Recipe and
Why it works blocks of each rung and still get full value.