Getting started › Quickstart

Quickstart

Install Doberman, wire it to your agent, and watch the first verdict.

On this page

Install
Run the setup wizard
Confirm it's healthy
Watch a verdict happen
Where to go next

Install#

bash

pip install doberman-core

Run the setup wizard#

bash

doberman setup

doberman setup walks you through a strength mode, guardrail tuning, and automatic hook installation for Claude Code. It's interactive by default: it asks you to pick a strength mode (Light, Balanced, Strict, or Paranoid), tunes the guardrail defaults to match, and wires the hooks into your Claude Code settings. Pass --yes to accept the defaults with no prompts, --mode to pick a mode directly, or --global to install the hooks for every project instead of just this one. Basic protection works the moment the wizard finishes; there is no separate activation step.

Confirm it's healthy#

bash

doberman doctor

doberman doctor is read-only: it only diagnoses, it never changes state. It checks your hooks, config, decision database, 2FA, and the fingerprint key, then prints a green or red checklist. It exits non-zero if a critical check fails, so it's script-friendly: gate a setup script on doberman doctor && ... and a broken install stops the script instead of running unprotected.

Watch a verdict happen#

bash

doberman demo

doberman demo drives a scripted attack reel, including a secret-exfiltration attempt and a destructive command, plus a couple of benign calls, through the real decision engine. Nothing is ever executed against a real tool. You'll see genuine PASS / AUTH / BLOCK verdicts land, and they're recorded in the decision log too. Add --fast to skip the pacing delay between scenarios, or --mode to see how the same scripted calls play out under a stricter setting.

Where to go next#

To front an existing MCP tool server instead of Claude Code's built-in tools, run:

bash

doberman serve -- <your tool server>

Add --path if the policy that should govern the proxy lives outside the current directory. See Setup for the full wiring, including Claude Desktop, Cursor, and OpenClaw.

For a live view of verdicts as they land, doberman dash starts a localhost-only dashboard: run it in one terminal and doberman demo in another to watch the attack reel fill the feed. Before you rely on Doberman, set a possession factor with doberman password set, or enroll two-factor with doberman 2fa setup. Setup covers both.