Quickstart

Download, sign in, get your first briefing.

Recommended

01: Create your account

Sign up or log in with Google — one click, no forms. Your account and API key are created automatically.

02: Download BASAL for Mac

Download the desktop app. Open and drag BASAL to Applications. First launch takes a minute to set up your local environment.

03: Connect your workspace

BASAL connects to your Calendar, Gmail, and Drive, giving you ground control over everything your organization communicates, decides, and creates. This opens entirely new dimensions for how you understand your operations.

Microsoft 365 is on the way, plus Slack, GitHub, and more connectors. Each one adds new senses to your intelligence graph.

04: Get your first briefing

Once connected, BASAL starts learning immediately. Try these from the app or the terminal:

Sync your calendar:

basal echo sync

Discovers meetings, extracts participants, and detects commitments.

Feed it a document:

basal ingest path/to/document.md

Extracts entities, facts, and relationships. Your knowledge graph grows.

Ask for a briefing:

basal now briefing

An operational briefing built from everything BASAL has learned so far.

Give it to your coding agent

BASAL's intelligence lives on your filesystem as structured markdown. That means any coding agent can read your knowledge graph, decisions, and operational memory directly from disk, no API needed.

Point your favorite agent at your BASAL workspace and it instantly inherits everything BASAL knows about your organization.

Works with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Open Code, Cursor, Antigravity, and more.

Your agents stop guessing at organizational context and start reasoning over structured intelligence. Every tool in your stack inherits the full situational picture.

Alternative: CLI-only install

05: Clone and install

If you prefer a CLI-only setup without the desktop app:

pnpm install && pnpm basal setup

Setup detects your system, installs everything needed, and configures it automatically.

06: Sign in and connect

pnpm basal connect

Opens a browser to sign in with Google. This creates your account, provisions your API key, and connects Google Workspace, all in one step. Credentials are stored locally in encrypted storage.

07: Verify

pnpm basal health

All checks should pass. You're ready to use the workflows from step 4 above.

Troubleshooting

08: Common issues

First launch stuck or failed

Check your network connection. Restart the app to retry.

CLI setup failed

Run pnpm basal setup --verbose for detailed output.

Health check failed

Run basal health: each check shows the specific fix needed.

API key invalid

Run basal connect to re-authenticate. You can also manage keys with basal connect.