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Quickstart

From install to your first briefing. Five steps, one optional.

1. Install the CLI​

uv tool install 'daimon-briefing[pretty]'

pipx install 'daimon-briefing[pretty]' works identically. The [pretty] extra adds rich tables and panels to status and brief; without it you get plain text.

2. Connect an LLM​

Serialization — turning a finished session into a checkpoint — needs an LLM endpoint. Run:

daimon configure

If the claude CLI is on your PATH, this prints ✓ ready and you are done — zero configuration. Otherwise, point daimon at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint:

daimon configure --backend litellm \
  --base-url https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai \
  --api-key <YOUR-KEY> --model gemini-2.5-flash

Then verify the backend end-to-end before trusting it:

daimon configure --test

This sends one tiny prompt through the resolved backend and reports pass or fail. Config is written to ~/.daimon/env — see Configuration for every variable, and the backends matrix for field-measured model combinations.

3. Hook up your host​

Hooks are what capture your sessions. For Claude Code, install the plugin — it registers the session hooks itself:

/plugin marketplace add Daily-Nerd/daimon
/plugin install daimon@daimon

For Windsurf, Codex, or Gemini CLI, follow your host's page in Hosts — each host has a different hook surface, and the per-host guides cover the exact registration steps and caveats.

Hooks capture sessions; the skill teaches the agent on the other side how to use the briefing — read it at session start, treat verbatim items as immutable quotes, verify stale-looking claims before repeating them:

daimon skill install claude

daimon skill list shows the install targets for other hosts.

5. End a session, start the next​

That's the whole loop:

  1. Work a normal session in your agent.
  2. End it. The session-end hook serializes a checkpoint in the background.
  3. Start the next session. The briefing is injected at session start:
While you were away — here's where we left off.

VERIFY BEFORE TRUSTING (state may have changed outside this session):
- [✓ verbatim] PR #212 state — you said you'd merge it yourself from the UI  — "I'll merge it after the demo"

Open loops:
- [✓ verbatim] Retry policy for the payments webhook — exponential or fixed?  — "don't ship the retry loop until we pick a policy"

Decisions made:
- [✓ verbatim] Postgres advisory locks over Redis locks for the scheduler  — "let's not add a Redis dependency for this"

Active topic: Migrating the scheduler off cron to the new worker pool

[✓ verbatim] means a deterministic checker found that quote in the session transcript; [~ inferred] marks the model's own conclusions. The full tag system is the point of the product — see Trust classes.

You can also read it in a terminal anytime with daimon brief.

Short sessions are skipped by design

A session shorter than DAIMON_MIN_MESSAGES (default: 10 messages) is not serialized — there is nothing worth remembering in a two-message exchange. If you are evaluating daimon and want your short test sessions captured, lower the threshold for now:

echo 'DAIMON_MIN_MESSAGES=4' >> ~/.daimon/env

Check that it's working​

daimon status

Status reports capture health honestly — failures, skips, and crashes included. The lines that matter on a fresh install:

project checkpoint: <session id>, written <n>m ago
last serialize result: success — wrote checkpoint: ...

If the last serialize failed or a session was never captured, a failed capture self-heals on the next session start — or run daimon heal to retry immediately.

Before you end a session​

If you are leaving work unfinished, pass the baton — one imperative line the next session sees above everything else in its briefing:

daimon handoff "Finish the migration first. Beware: the staging DB is stale."

A checkpoint reconstructs what happened; the baton carries what you intended next. Full story in the item lifecycle.

Where to next​

  • CLI reference — every verb, one page.
  • Configuration — every environment variable, including the DAIMON_DISABLE kill switch.
  • Hosts — per-host setup detail and known limitations.
  • Team memory — share checkpoints with teammates through a private git remote (opt-in).