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Guide

Quick start

Install Kibi, initialize it in your repository, and let your coding agent bootstrap the project model in one guided step.

This page takes you from an empty repository to a bootstrapped, validated project model. It assumes you have a coding agent you can prompt (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode, VS Code, and other MCP clients all work) and commit access to the repository.

1. Install the prerequisites

Kibi runs on Node.js 22+, and its deterministic checks run on SWI-Prolog. Install SWI-Prolog 9.0+ and make sure swipl is on your PATH:

bash
swipl --version

Platform-specific instructions — Ubuntu, macOS, Windows, and other Linux distributions — are in the installation guide.

2. Add Kibi to your project

From your repository root:

bash
npm install --save-dev kibi-core kibi-cli kibi-mcp
npm exec -- kibi init

kibi init creates the local infrastructure: the .kb/ directory layout and the Git hooks that keep it synchronized.

3. Let your agent bootstrap the repository

This is the one prompt that does the heavy lifting. Ask your coding agent:

Bootstrap Kibi for this repository.

The agent discovers Kibi's bundled workflow guidance, analyzes the codebase, and produces a read-only bootstrap plan. Nothing is written until you approve it: the agent shows you the complete plan and its hash, you approve, and it applies the plan in one audited step, then validates the result.

4. Look at the proof state

After bootstrap, ask your agent for the health report — or run it yourself:

bash
npm exec -- kibi report --open

You get a self-contained HTML page. The headline is a count, such as "0 of 12 current requirements fully proven end-to-end." An honest zero on day one is a successful report: it exists to make gaps explicit. Read the health report explains the rows.

5. Work normally

From here, prompt as usual. Ask for features, fixes, refactors. Your agent keeps the requirements, scenarios, tests, and code links in step with the code, and Kibi's validation gates run in the background on every change. Useful manual commands:

bash
npm exec -- kibi status   # branch, snapshot freshness, migration state
npm exec -- kibi search login
npm exec -- kibi gaps req --format table

Next steps