Quickstart

Get OpenAgent running and edit your first file in under two minutes.

1. 1. Install
2. 2. First run
3. 3. Ask it to do something
4. 4. Common shortcuts
5. 5. Next steps

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1. Install

brew install ask-sol/openagent/openagent

Or see Install for Linux, WSL, and from-source instructions.

2. First run

openagent

The setup wizard asks two questions:

1. How do you want to run models? — Cloud (an API provider) or Local (Ollama / LM Studio / MLX).
2. Which model? — pick one from the curated list, or paste an OpenRouter ID.

If you have a Claude Max or Pro subscription, pick Anthropic (Max Plan) — no API key needed.

3. Ask it to do something

> add a /health endpoint to server.ts that returns { ok: true }

OpenAgent will:

1. Read server.ts.
2. Plan the edit and show you a TodoWrite list.
3. Apply the edit (you’ll see a syntax-highlighted diff).
4. Run any tests it finds.
5. Summarize what changed.

4. Common shortcuts

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Cycle through previous prompts
Esc	Stop the current task / close menus / dismiss prompts
Ctrl+T	Toggle terminal mode (run shell commands inline)
Shift+Tab	Cycle permission mode (Standard → Cautious → Unrestricted)
Ctrl+C	Quit

5. Next steps

• Providers — switch between Claude, GPT-5, Gemini, Ollama, and more.
• Plugins — extend the agent with linters, test runners, snapshot rollbacks.
• MCP — connect Model Context Protocol servers (filesystem, GitHub, Postgres, Slack, etc.).
• Commands — full reference for the 70+ slash commands.