Quickstart

Prerequisites

• Node 20+ (the CLI ships as an npm package)
• A model API key, or a local runtime like Ollama or vLLM
• A git repository you want to work in

1. Install

npm i -g openkody
openkody --version
# openkody 0.4.0

Set a model key with an environment variable. Openkody reads the standard provider variables, so if you already export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY it picks it up automatically. See Bring your own model for every supported provider.

2. Initialize a repo

From the root of your project, run openkody init. Openkody indexes the repository and stores embeddings under .openkody/ in your working tree. Nothing is uploaded.

cd ~/my-project
openkody init
# ✓ Detected: TypeScript, Next.js 15
# ✓ Indexed 482 files → .openkody/index
# ✓ Using model: claude-opus-4-8

Add .openkody/ to your .gitignore unless you want to commit the local index.

3. Ask a question

Use openkody ask for read-only questions about the codebase. Retrieval runs against your local index, so answers cite real files and line numbers.

openkody ask "where is the auth middleware?"
# → src/server/middleware/auth.ts:14
#   The session guard is registered in createApp() at line 27.

4. Apply a fix

Use openkody fix to make changes. The --interactive flag shows a diff preview for every file before anything is written, so you stay in control of the edit.

openkody fix --interactive "make the auth guard return 401 instead of redirecting"
# → proposed patch: src/server/middleware/auth.ts
#   review · apply · skip ?

Need a second opinion before merging? openkody review reads a diff and comments on it without touching files.

Editor extensions

The CLI is the source of truth, but you can drive the same engine from your editor. Extensions are available for VS Code, Zed, and Neovim — each one drives the local Openkody binary, so the behavior is identical to the terminal.