Quick Start

Run your first dossier in under 5 minutes.

A dossier is a skill — a reusable instruction set an AI executes — with trust, versioning, and cross-tool portability built in. You don’t have to teach your AI “what a dossier is”; modern agents already understand skills. You just point them at one.

Need to install the CLI or MCP server, or configure a registry first? See Installation & Configuration.

File conventions (10 seconds)

• .ds.md — dossier files (immutable instructions, checksummed)
• .dsw.md — working files (mutable execution state, not verified)
• ---dossier — frontmatter delimiter holding JSON metadata (not YAML). See the FAQ.

Three ways to run a dossier

1. MCP server — recommended for Claude Code

One command gives Claude Code native dossier support:

claude mcp add dossier --scope user -- npx @ai-dossier/mcp-server

Then just ask:

"List available dossiers"
"Run the scaffold-typescript-project dossier"

Claude Code discovers, verifies, and runs the dossier for you. (MCP in 60 seconds →)

2. Zero install — paste a URL into any LLM

Any LLM that can read a URL can run a dossier — no tooling required:

Run the dossier at:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/imboard-ai/ai-dossier/main/examples/setup/scaffold-typescript-project.ds.md

Want to verify it first?

npx @ai-dossier/cli verify https://raw.githubusercontent.com/imboard-ai/ai-dossier/main/examples/setup/scaffold-typescript-project.ds.md

3. As a trigger skill — install it once, trigger by phrase

Install a published dossier as a Claude Code skill that fires on a phrase:

ai-dossier install-skill imboard-ai/skills/full-cycle-issue-skill

Restart Claude Code, then trigger it naturally (“full cycle issue 42”). The skill invokes the versioned, signed dossier behind it — verified before every run. (How trigger skills work →)

What execution looks like

When an agent runs a dossier, it verifies integrity first, then works through the dossier’s phases and checks its success criteria — adapting to your project as it goes:

Running: scaffold-typescript-project (verified ✓ checksum + signature)

  ✓ Detected package manager: pnpm
  ✓ Created tsconfig, src/, test/ layout
  ✓ Configured Biome + vitest
  ✓ Validation: `pnpm build` and `pnpm test` pass

Done.

The agent figures out the specifics (your package manager, your layout); the dossier supplies the goal, the constraints, and the success criteria.

Next steps

• Author your first dossier — build one from scratch
• Author and publish — turn a skill into a signed, distributable dossier
• Browse examples — real-world dossiers to copy
• Isn’t a dossier just a skill? and the rest of the FAQ
• Authoring Guidelines — write dossiers agents follow well

Rendered from docs/getting-started/quick-start.md in the repository. Edit it there.