Quick Start

Get up and running with dotai in under 5 minutes. If you haven’t installed yet, see Installation.

Initialize

Run dotai init in your project root:

cd your-project
dotai init

This creates an .ai/ directory with a starter config.yaml and example directives.

Add a Directive

Create a file at .ai/directives/code-style.md:

---
scope: project
alwaysApply: true
---

# Code Style

- Use TypeScript strict mode
- Prefer named exports over default exports
- Write tests for all new functions

Sync

Generate config files for your AI tools:

dotai sync

This produces the right files for each tool:

Tool	Generated files
Claude Code	CLAUDE.md, .claude/settings.json, .claude/rules/*.md
Cursor	.cursor/rules/*.mdc, .cursorignore
Codex	AGENTS.md, .codex/config.toml
GitHub Copilot	.github/copilot-instructions.md, .github/agents/*.agent.md, .vscode/mcp.json
OpenCode	.opencode/instructions/*.md, .opencode/agents/*.md, opencode.json
Antigravity	.agent/rules/*.md, .agent/skills/*/SKILL.md, mcp_config.json

Check Status

See what’s in sync and what needs updating:

dotai status

Validate

Run validation checks on your .ai/ configuration:

dotai check

Next Steps

• Explore the Concepts overview to understand dotai’s 8 entity types
• See which features each tool supports in the Compatibility Matrix
• Already have configs? Import them