Quickstart

From download to an agent that reads your project's knowledge base — about ten minutes, using the bundled sample project as the worked example.

You'll need: a Mac running macOS 13 or later, a coding agent that speaks MCP (the steps below use Claude Code), and Node 20+ on your machine — your agent uses it to launch Veri's local MCP server. Veri checks for it and tells you if it's missing.

1. Install Veri

Download the DMG for your Mac's chip from the latest release: aarch64 for Apple silicon (M-series), x64 for Intel. Unsure which you have? Apple menu → About This Mac — "Chip: Apple M…" means Apple silicon.
Open it and drag Veri into Applications.
Launch Veri. The app is signed and notarized, so macOS opens it without warnings.

2. Open the sample project

On first launch, Veri shows a welcome screen with three choices. Pick Explore the sample project — a working invoicing-app knowledge base with sixteen documents you can read, edit, and connect an agent to.

Choose a folder to put it in. Veri shows you exactly what it will write before it writes anything; nothing is created until you confirm. (The other two cards — create a new empty project, or open a folder that already has a veri/ directory — work the same way. Everything below applies to your own projects too.)

3. Look around

You land on the home view. Three things worth noticing before you connect an agent:

The sidebar groups the project's documents by type: requirements, decisions, work orders, and sources. Click anything — every document is a plain markdown file.
NEEDS REVIEW shows one draft requirement waiting for approval. Drafts — including anything an agent writes — stay non-binding until you promote them.
HEALTH shows two issues. They're left in the sample on purpose: veri check validates the knowledge base (broken links, work orders with no requirement, and so on), and the sample demonstrates what that looks like.

4. Connect your agent

Click Settings at the bottom of the left rail, then Agent connection to open the connection screen.
Click Set up connection. Veri writes one file — a project-scoped .mcp.json next to the veri/ directory — telling agent apps how to launch Veri's MCP server for this project. The panel shows the exact JSON before and after; the connection page documents every field.
Restart your agent session: quit and reopen Claude Code (or start a new session) in the project folder. Agent apps read .mcp.json on launch — this is the one step Veri can't do for you.
Back in Veri, use LIVE CHECK → Verify connection. Veri launches the server exactly the way your agent will and performs a real MCP handshake. Green means your agent will see ten tools: get_context, get_import_instructions, search, get_document, get_neighbors, file_decision, file_work_order, file_requirement, file_source, file_receipt. Anything else, the panel names the cause and the one fix.

5. File a work order

The sample has work orders already, but file one yourself to see the shape. In the sidebar, hover WORK ORDERS and click +. Give it a title like Add late-payment reminder emails, then fill the template's sections: a summary, what's in and out of scope, and — important — a link to the requirement it implements. Type [[ in the editor to link any document by id or title.

Out-of-scope lines aren't decoration: they ride into the context package, and agents are told to treat them as forbidden.

6. Watch the agent use it

Open your work order. The CONTEXT PACKAGE panel on the right lists exactly what an agent will receive — the work order, its linked requirement, every active decision within two hops, source excerpts — with token estimates per document.

Click Copy kickoff prompt and paste it into Claude Code. The agent will call get_context for your work order and start from the package — constraints included — instead of from a blank prompt. When it finishes a session, it files a receipt: commit, files touched, one-line summary, appended to the work order file itself.

Back on the home view, AGENT ACTIVITY shows the trail: context pulls, decisions filed, receipts landed. All of it is in your files — git diff shows every word the agent wrote.

Where next: the workflow guide explains the method — how evidence becomes requirements, decisions, and work orders, and why the approval gate matters. The reference covers every document type, frontmatter field, and veri check rule.