Hi
@plain-addition-50891, no, logging in to app.garden.io is not required to use Garden but it comes with a lot of benefits. 🙂
Garden Core is an OSS cli tool that unfortunately doesn't come with a UI of any sort, so we built app.garden.io with the goal of
a) give users a better experience when developing and debugging large projects through the Commands page, where you can take a look at logs for different actions, visualize the stackgraph and immediately gauge at errors in your Garden commands, either locally or in CI; and [much more](
https://docs.garden.io/using-garden/dashboard).
b) help with onboarding: the example project comes preconfigured to use our ephemeral clusters, so you don't need to spend too much time setting your own test cluster and can immediately start "playing" with Garden.
Of course it's possible that you are totally fine without a UI and with [configuring your own cluster](
https://docs.garden.io/kubernetes-plugins/about) (either locally or remotely) and we are cool with that. 🙂
We are always open to feedback, so happy to hear more about your thoughts. 🙂