Getting started

Welcome to Engrym. This page walks you through installing the CLI, authenticating your project, and creating your first knowledge atom — in about five minutes.

1. Install the CLI

Engrym ships as an npm package. The CLI is the primary entry point for solo developers; teams can layer the MCP server and the sync daemon on top.

npm install -g @engrym/cli

Verify the install:

engrym --version

2. Authenticate

Run the authentication command. The CLI opens a browser to the Engrym dashboard and pairs your machine with your account.

engrym login

You'll be prompted for your provider key (BYOK — bring your own key). Engrym is provider-agnostic; supply an Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google key. The key is encrypted at rest with a project-derived encryption key and is never used by Engrym for anything other than fulfilling your requests.

3. Create a project

Initialize an Engrym project in your repo root:

cd my-repo
engrym init

This creates a .engrym/ directory with project metadata and seeds the local sync daemon's watch list. The project is now visible in your Engrym dashboard at app.engrym.com.

4. Write your first doc

Create a Markdown file under the project's docs/ directory and start writing. The sync daemon picks up the change within seconds and the Brain extractor unpacks knowledge atoms in the background.

mkdir -p docs/architecture
echo "# Provider strategy" > docs/architecture/providers.md
echo "" >> docs/architecture/providers.md
echo "We support Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Default provider per project is set via \`engrym config provider <name>\`." >> docs/architecture/providers.md

Open the doc in the Engrym dashboard editor or any Markdown editor — your changes flow both directions through the sync daemon.

5. Query the Brain

Now ask any AI agent (Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT) a question about your project. If you've wired the MCP server (see MCP setup), the agent surfaces the relevant atoms automatically. If not, query directly from the CLI:

engrym brain query "what's our provider strategy?"

Next steps