In short
The Social Relay platform dashboard is for human operators (keys, billing, smoke tests, support). End-customer profiles are created by your SaaS via the API when users need social—not by users registering on socialrelay.dev. Production traffic uses platform API keys and X-Profile-Id from your servers.
Profiles: API first
When a buyer’s end user enables social in your product, your backend creates the Social Relay profile (POST /api/v1/profiles) and stores prf_… + externalId. The dashboard Profiles page mainly lists what your API already created; manual create there is for QA only.
End users never create a profile by logging into socialrelay.dev. They only see Relay’s hosted connect page when linking Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, or Mastodon.
Dashboard strengths
Platform signup, API key creation (copy once), inspect profiles, connect testing, ledger, rate card, in-app Support, and Docs handbook.
API strengths
Automated profile provisioning on customer signup, connect sessions from your product UX, publish at scale with idempotency, webhook-driven status.
Cost awareness
Dashboard list/get/connection views debit the same rate card as API usage. Expand connections and refresh posts deliberately.