# Quickstart

Point your coding agent at Kopai and see traces, logs, and metrics from your app

Kopai is built for coding agents. You install the skills. Your agent does the rest. Everything runs locally without an account.

Prefer to wire things by hand? Follow [Manual Setup](/manual-setup/). No app to instrument yet? [Run the demo app](/try-demo/) instead.

## Prerequisites

- Node.js v22.13.0+ installed

## Quick Prompt

Paste this into your coding agent and it handles Steps 1 and 2 for you:

```text
Read https://kopai.app/quickstart.md and set up Kopai in my project.
```

When it finishes, pick up at [Step 3](#step-3-ask-questions).

## Step 1: Install the Kopai Skills

**npm:**

```bash
npx skills add kopai-app/kopai-mono
```

**pnpm:**

```bash
pnpm dlx skills add kopai-app/kopai-mono
```

**yarn:**

```bash
yarn dlx skills add kopai-app/kopai-mono
```

The installer asks which skills to add. Select all three:

- `otel-instrumentation` — instruments your app and proves telemetry arrives
- `root-cause-analysis` — investigates issues by querying your telemetry
- `create-dashboard` — builds dashboards from your metrics, logs, and traces

Coding agents running this command skip the picker and install all three automatically. The skills work with Claude Code and 20+ other agents. See [AI Agent Skills](/skills/) for details and other install options.

## Step 2: Ask Your Agent to Instrument

```text
Add observability to my app and confirm telemetry reaches Kopai.
```

The `otel-instrumentation` skill runs the whole loop: it starts the local Kopai backend, installs the OpenTelemetry SDK, instruments your code, drives traffic through the app, and asserts on the telemetry that arrives. It covers Node.js, Next.js, Python, Go, Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Rust, Erlang, and C++. Browser JavaScript needs [Manual Setup](/manual-setup/).

## Step 3: Ask Questions

Ask these in a fresh chat. Instrumentation fills the agent's context, and a new conversation gives better answers. One check first: the skill started Kopai inside the old chat, so if you closed that chat, the server is likely down. Ask your agent to start Kopai again, or run `npx @kopai/app start` yourself.

The validation run already produced telemetry: the skill hit every entry point and drove one failure on purpose. Ask about it:

```text
Find the request that failed during validation and explain what happened.
```

Then use your app and ask about the real traffic:

```text
What are the slowest requests, and where do they spend their time?
```

The `root-cause-analysis` skill answers by querying your telemetry through the Kopai SDK and CLI, and backs every finding with evidence. The dashboard at `http://localhost:8000` shows the same data if you want to browse it yourself.

## Next Steps

Your telemetry is flowing. Pick what comes next:

- [Kopai Cloud](/kopai-cloud/) — Send telemetry to a hosted backend and share it with your team, free while in alpha
- [Try with Demo App](/try-demo/) — Run a full microservices demo, GenAI services included
- [AI Agent Skills](/skills/) — Debug production issues and build dashboards with the other Kopai skills