getting started

Have an agent set it up

If you already run a coding agent, the fastest install is to hand the job to it. There is a guide written for that audience specifically, and it is plain Markdown rather than a page, so an agent gets the text and not a layout.

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The line to paste

Help me understand and set up swe-mux. Read https://swemux.dev/agent-guide.md first, then walk me through it step by step.

The guide is https://swemux.dev/agent-guide.md. Reading it costs nothing, and it tells your agent to ask before it installs anything.

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What the guide covers

  • What swe-mux is, and the three properties worth explaining before anything is installed.
  • The prerequisites to check, and which failures should stop the install.
  • Every install method, what each one leaves behind, and the two things none of them do.
  • First run, and mux doctor as the verification step.
  • The concepts to explain and the order to explain them in, which is deliberately not the order a feature list would use.
  • Where configuration and data live on each host.
  • The phone setup, and the access boundary stated plainly.
  • Exactly what leaves the machine, in the same terms this reference uses.
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What it tells the agent about itself

The last section of the guide is rules for the agent rather than for you, and they are the part worth holding it to:

  • Verify, do not assumeAfter each stage, run the command that proves it worked and read the real output. mux doctor is that command for the install as a whole.
  • Do not invent commands or flagsA command that does not exist costs a person whose install is already broken the one thing they came for.
  • Do not run destructive commandsNothing in a swe-mux install needs elevation, and nothing needs an existing directory removed.
  • Say what was skippedIf it skipped the phone step or the desktop extra, it should say so and say what you gave up.
  • Your agent CLIs are not its to reconfigureswe-mux reads their state. Changing their settings, accounts, or transcripts is out of scope for a setup pass.
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It names its own authorities

The guide states which sources win when it disagrees with them, and it carries the date it was revised and the version it was checked against. That is what makes it safe for it to go stale: a reader is told where the authority is rather than being left to find out.