Skip to content
Instar

Quick Start

Setup

Section titled “Setup”

Run the setup wizard:

Terminal window
npx instar

Follow the prompts. The wizard will ask you to:

  1. Choose a configuration (General Agent or Project Agent)
  2. Set up Telegram (create a bot, provide the token)
  3. Describe your agent’s identity and your working relationship
  4. Optionally install auto-start on login

Talk to Your Agent

Section titled “Talk to Your Agent”

Once setup completes, send a message in Telegram. Your agent will respond in its own voice.

Try these first interactions:

  • “What can you do?” — The agent will describe its capabilities
  • “Check my emails every 2 hours” — Watch it create a job and schedule
  • “Remember that I prefer TypeScript over JavaScript” — It’ll save this to MEMORY.md
  • “What time is it?” — Temporal awareness in action

Watch It Work

Section titled “Watch It Work”

Your Telegram group becomes a living dashboard:

  • Each scheduled job gets its own topic
  • The Lifeline topic (green icon) shows health status
  • Interactive topics are your conversations with the agent
  • /new creates a fresh topic with its own session

See the Infrastructure

Section titled “See the Infrastructure”
Terminal window
instar status               # What's running
curl localhost:4040/health   # Server health (JSON)
curl localhost:4040/jobs     # Scheduled jobs

The web dashboard (if tunnel is configured) shows sessions, jobs, relationships, and evolution in real time.

Add Capabilities

Section titled “Add Capabilities”
Terminal window
# Add email integration
instar add email --credentials-file ./credentials.json


# Add Sentry error tracking
instar add sentry --dsn https://key@o0.ingest.sentry.io/0


# Add quota tracking
instar add quota

What Happens Next

Section titled “What Happens Next”

With default settings, your agent will:

  • Every 5 minutes: Run a health check (Haiku)
  • Every 2 hours: Self-diagnose infrastructure (Sonnet)
  • Every 4 hours: Reflect on recent work (Sonnet), check commitments (Haiku)
  • Every 6 hours: Review evolution proposals (Sonnet), retry failed feedback (Haiku)
  • Every 8 hours: Harvest insights from learnings (Sonnet)
  • Daily: Review stale relationships (Sonnet)

These default jobs give your agent a circadian rhythm — regular self-maintenance without your intervention.

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”