Running in a minute.

Install globally with npm (or pnpm):

npm install -g crayon-cli
# or:  pnpm add -g crayon-cli

Prefer not to install? Run it straight away:

npx crayon-cli@latest chat

The fastest path is the setup wizard — it asks for your provider, model, and API key, then saves them to ~/.crayon/config.json:

crayon config

Or set an environment variable for your provider and skip the wizard:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."
# optional overrides:
export CRAYON_PROVIDER="anthropic"
export CRAYON_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-6"

Open an interactive session in your project:

cd your-project
crayon chat

Or fire a one-shot task and let it run:

crayon run "add a health-check endpoint and a test for it"

Control how much it can do on its own with --mode (or the /mode command in chat):

• ask — confirm every edit and command (default)
• auto-edit — apply edits, confirm commands
• plan — plan only, change nothing
• auto — run freely, block dangerous commands
• bypass — no prompts (use with care)

Point Crayon at a local Ollama server for zero-cost, fully private runs — no API key:

ollama run qwen2.5-coder:7b     # pull a model once
export CRAYON_PROVIDER="ollama"
crayon chat

Editor: install the VS Code extension for a chat panel with live reasoning and click-to-source citations.

Tools: connect any Model Context Protocol server to give the agent new capabilities:

crayon mcp add <name> <command> [args...]
crayon mcp list