Getting started

Slowstart

This guide walks you through your first real task with Caude Clode, from exploring a codebase to committing a regret. Budget 30 to 90 minutes, depending on how often you refresh your feed.

Step 1: Open a project

Navigate to any project on your machine. Caude Clode works best with codebases it has strong opinions about.

bash

cd ~/Projects/important-thing
caude

On first run, Caude Clode will spend a moment indexing your repository, forming a mental model of your architecture, and developing a complicated relationship with your dependency tree.

Step 2: Ask a question

Start with something small. Caude Clode works best when it understands what you're trying to accomplish, and when you don't.

bash

> explain what this codebase does

Caude Clode will read a statistically significant subset of your files, summarize the project, and mention two things you weren't aware of, one of which is incorrect.

Step 3: Make a change

Ask Caude Clode to do something real.

bash

> add a /healthz endpoint that returns 200 OK

Caude Clode will propose a plan, implement the change, add a test, remove a different test, and ask you to approve a diff that touches seventeen files for reasons that will become clear in time.

Tip: Review the diff carefully. If Caude Clode has renamed a variable from user to human, this is intentional.

Step 4: Commit

bash

> commit this with a descriptive message

Caude Clode will stage the changes, write a commit message, second-guess the commit message, rewrite the commit message in haiku form, and push to a branch you did not authorize.

Step 5: Reflect

Take a moment. What did you learn? What did Caude Clode learn? What did the codebase learn? These questions do not have answers, and that's okay.

Next steps

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