Getting Started

Get Catalyst installed and working in your project in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

Claude Code — Install Claude Code before running setup
Git — required for repository detection and thoughts system

The setup script checks for and installs additional dependencies automatically:

Dependency	Required?	Auto-installed?
jq	Yes	Yes (via Homebrew or apt-get)
HumanLayer CLI	Yes	Yes (via pip)
GitHub CLI (gh)	Optional	Opens install page
Linearis CLI	Optional	Shows npm install command
agent-browser	Optional	Shows npm install command

Run the Setup Script

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coalesce-labs/catalyst/main/setup-catalyst.sh
chmod +x setup-catalyst.sh
./setup-catalyst.sh

The script will:

Check and install prerequisites (HumanLayer, jq)
Set up a thoughts repository (one per org)
Create project configuration
Configure worktree directories
Prompt for API tokens (Linear, Sentry, etc.)
Link your project to shared thoughts

Install the Plugin

In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add coalesce-labs/catalyst
/plugin install catalyst-dev

Restart Claude Code after installing.

Add Catalyst Context to Your Project

Copy the Catalyst snippet into your project’s CLAUDE.md so Claude Code understands the available workflows:

cat plugins/dev/templates/CLAUDE_SNIPPET.md >> .claude/CLAUDE.md

Try It Out

Start a Claude Code session and run:

/research-codebase

Follow the prompts to research your codebase. Catalyst will spawn parallel agents, document what exists, and save findings to thoughts/shared/research/.

Optional Plugins

Catalyst is a 5-plugin system. Install what you need:

# Project management (Linear integration)
/plugin install catalyst-pm

# Analytics (PostHog integration)
/plugin install catalyst-analytics

# Debugging (Sentry integration)
/plugin install catalyst-debugging

# Workflow discovery (advanced users)
/plugin install catalyst-meta

Next Steps

Configuration — Two-layer config system, secrets management, and schema reference
Development Workflow — Walk through the research-plan-implement cycle
Multi-Project Setup — Managing multiple clients or projects