Getting started

This page takes you from nothing to a first judged run. It uses only commands that exist today and says which ones spend provider or subscription quota. Every term in bold is defined on the Concepts page. The full recipe book is Usage.

What you need

• Node 20 or newer.
• A git repository with at least one commit, for the repo you point Cyberine at.
• At least one thing to dispatch to: a provider API key stored with cyberine auth login <provider>, or a logged-in subscription CLI (claude, codex or muse).
• The Claude Code CLI on PATH, only if you want the Claude Code plugin, the claude worker, subscription seats or cyberine autopilot.

Install the CLI

npm i -g @cyberine/cli
cyberine --version

A one-line installer does the same and also wires the Claude Code plugin when claude is on PATH:

curl -fsSL https://cyberine.dev/install.sh | sh

Windows is not covered by the installer script: use the npm command there. Alpine and other musl Linux images are unsupported because every binary is a glibc build.

Platform support. One table, kept the same in USAGE.md, README.md and the site's Getting started page. "Run" means a person ran it there; "built" means the package is published but nobody has run it.

Connect a worker

cyberine setup
cyberine setup --status

cyberine setup is guided and re-runnable: it stores provider keys, picks a chat model and prints the workers it found. cyberine setup --status only reads. Its CLI agents (logged in): line and its detection table name every worker that was found and how it was detected. If the table is empty, Cyberine has nothing to dispatch to yet.

Pin your repo

Run this inside the repository you want to work on:

cyberine init --yes
cyberine doctor

cyberine init pins a fleet to exactly what it detected, plus one lane per global seat. It also seeds an empty task board at .local/tasks/ACTIVE.md when none exists and adds .local/ to the repo's .gitignore. cyberine doctor checks providers, CLIs and repo readiness, and tells you what to fix.

Preview a run for free

cyberine route "add a comment to utils.ts"

cyberine route is a dry run of the router. It prints the task's tier and kind, the mode it would pick, which fleet would run and why. Nothing is dispatched and nothing is spent.

Run a first task

cyberine run "Explain what src/core/router.ts decides, in one paragraph"

This one spends quota: it sends the task to every available worker, and a judge then picks a winner. Use --cheap to restrict the run to non-premium loop workers, --fleet <ids> to pin exactly which workers run, and --bg to detach it and come back later. For a code change, add --mode compete (the default) or --mode swarm; see Concepts for what a mode changes.

A finished code run leaves a winning diff, not an edited tree. Read it, then land it:

cyberine digest <runId>
cyberine apply <runId>

cyberine digest is a free read of the run card: who won, what it cost, what the judge found. cyberine apply writes the winning diff to your working tree and spends nothing. cyberine run --pr instead pushes the winner as a branch and opens a draft pull request.

Work from the task board

Most day-to-day use is a board rather than one-off prompts:

cyberine tasks                       # show the board
cyberine next                        # show runnable tasks
cyberine draft "<the idea>"          # spends quota: reviewed drafts land in the inbox
cyberine tasks inbox                 # read the drafts; nothing is on the board yet
cyberine tasks save --input <batch.json>   # keep the drafts you want
cyberine autopilot --dry-run         # print the plan, launch nothing
cyberine autopilot --max-iter 2 --max-hours 1   # a small first unattended run

cyberine draft turns an intent into drafts in the inbox. Nothing reaches the board until you save. cyberine autopilot refuses to start until the repo records the Cyberine rules as applied, which cyberine init --rules (or the /cyberine:init skill) writes after its own conflict check. Start with --dry-run.

Use it from Claude Code

cyberine plugin install

Restart Claude Code (or run /reload), then say what you want in plain words with the word "cyberine" in it:

/cyberine:go cyberine what can you do

/cyberine:go is the front door. It maps your request onto one of the leaf skills (init, tasks, handoff, end, plan, ask, run, autopilot, research), prints a two-line receipt naming the leaf and what you get back, and hands off. Say "khong, dung " to override its pick. It never dispatches work by itself.

To carry a session over to the next one, /cyberine:handoff writes a short handoff at once and for free, and /cyberine:end wraps the board and writes the full one.

Where to go next

• Concepts: the vocabulary above, one definition per term.
• Usage: every recipe, with the environment-variable table.
• Task manifest spec: the board format cyberine tasks reads and writes.
• Features: the catalog of what ships today.
• Beta guide: for the closed beta, what to try, what Cyberine puts on your machine, how to upgrade and how to remove it.

If something breaks, send a bug report to xinchao@contextq.dev with the output of cyberine --version and cyberine doctor; security issues go to the same address (see SECURITY.md).

Known limitations

• win32-x64 is published but has never been run on a real Windows machine.
• The Claude Code plugin loads from a symlink in ~/.claude/skills; Claude Code must be restarted or reloaded after cyberine plugin install.
• cyberine run, cyberine draft, cyberine research and cyberine autopilot spend provider or subscription quota. route, digest, apply, doctor, setup --status, tasks and next do not.
• The SDK is not covered here: see the SDK section of Usage.