Quickstart

Get up and running with NIKI in under 5 minutes.

Get your first verified branch with NIKI in under five minutes.

Prerequisites

1. Rust: Rust 1.85+ (2024 edition) installed.
2. Container Engine: Podman (recommended) or Docker running in rootless mode.
3. LLM API Key: At least one API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Google, or a local Ollama instance.

Step 1: Build the Sandbox Image

NIKI executes code and test suites inside a hardened container image with git, node, npm, python3, rustc, and cargo pre-installed.

# Build sandbox image using Podman or Docker
podman build -t niki-sandbox:24.04 -f docker/Dockerfile .
# or: docker build -t niki-sandbox:24.04 -f docker/Dockerfile .

Step 2: Configure Your API Key

Create niki.toml in your project root or set environment variables:

cp niki.example.toml niki.toml

Set your API key via environment variable (takes precedence over config file):

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
# or export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
# or export GOOGLE_API_KEY=AIza...

Step 3: Run Your First Task

Describe what you want to implement in plain English:

niki run "Add a GET /health endpoint returning { status: 'ok', uptime }" --project ./my-app

Watch the pipeline execute across all four stages:

 ◈ ⟠ ◉ ◆   NIKI
   "Add a GET /health endpoint…"

 [Planner]   Done — Spec: 1 file to modify
 [Coder]     Done — Changed 1 file · src/api.rs [modified]
 [Tester]    Done — 8/8 tests passed
 [Reviewer]  Done — Approved · correctness 10/10 · quality 9/10 · coverage 10/10
 [NIKI]      Task complete — Branch: niki/6d281d6d · Verdict: Approved · Revisions: 0

Step 4: Review and Merge

Switch to the generated branch in your target project to inspect the code:

git -C ./my-app switch niki/6d281d6d

View the complete decision audit report:

niki report 6d281d6d