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Get started

Go from nothing to a running kli session, then the handful of things that are not like other agents: full permissions by default, and diffs already on disk.

This page gets you from nothing to a running session and names the things a kli session does differently from other agents. It assumes you are comfortable in a terminal and with git.

Install and run

sh
curl -fsSL https://kli.kleisli.io | sh

The installer drops a prebuilt binary under ~/.local and a kli on your PATH (Linux x86_64 and aarch64, macOS aarch64). On an Intel Mac, or for the Nix and from-source paths, see Installation.

kli reads an Anthropic key from ANTHROPIC_API_KEY; export it and the bundled Anthropic provider is live. Other providers, OAuth, and credential files are in Connect a provider.

sh
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
cd path/to/your/repo
kli

Choose a model with /model, then type a request naming a file.

What a kli session does differently

  • It is fully permissioned by default. There is no approval prompt. A tool call — bash, a file write, eval — runs the moment the model emits it, with the privileges of the kli process. Decide your confinement before you point it at anything you care about: Restrict what kli can do and the security model.
  • A diff card is a change already on disk. kli does not stage an edit for you to accept; the card is the receipt for a write that already happened. Keep it by doing nothing, drop it with git. Edits are anchored to line-and-content hashes, so a patch against a file that has drifted is rejected, not misapplied.
  • The session is a live image you can rewrite. Behavior is CLOS cells over pandoric closures, so you can hot-patch the running agent from /eval without dropping the session — see The live image.

Next

  • Teach kli your project — an AGENTS.md kli reads at startup so it stops guessing your conventions.
  • Concepts — the agent loop, sessions as a tree, the live image, and how authority is decided.
  • Extend kli — everything above the kernel is an extension, and this is the part you will live in.