Quick start guide

This guide will walk you through installing Tessl, initializing it in your project, and using tiles to provide better context to your coding agent.

Install the Tessl CLI

Install the Tessl CLI globally using npm:

npm install -g @tessl/cli

For more detailed installation instructions, including authentication and troubleshooting, see Installation.

Initialize Tessl in your project

Open source dependencies must be installed in your project (via pip, npm, etc.) before Tessl can detect and install the relevant tiles for them. If your project's open source dependencies aren’t yet installed, complete that step first and then return here.

From your project's root directory, run:

tessl init

This command will:

Authenticate you with Tessl (if not already logged in)
Install the relevant tiles for open source dependencies installed within your project
Optionally configure your coding agent for MCP support

Configuring your agent for MCP

By default, tessl init will attempt to auto-detect your coding agent and configure MCP support automatically. If you don't have any agent configuration installed yet, or want to explicitly specify which agent to configure, use the --agent flag or view additional configuration options on Custom agent setup:

tessl init --agent cursor
# or
tessl init --agent claude-code

Search for and install a tile manually

You can search for and install tiles manually to add context for external libraries or frameworks you're using. You may want to do this if you have:

open source dependencies that are not yet installed
tile dependencies that are not listed in a dependency manifest

To search, use tessl search. For example, to search for Express.js:

tessl search express

This will display available tiles matching your search. Select the one you want to install (e.g., tessl/npm-express 4.21.2).

After installation, the tile will be added to .tessl/tiles/ in your project, and your agent will have access to it through MCP.

Use tiles with your coding agent

Once you've installed tiles and configured MCP support for your agent, you can start coding with enhanced context.

Open your configured agent (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) and try a prompt that would benefit from the tile context. For example:

Create an Express.js server with routes for user authentication

Your agent will automatically use the installed Express.js tile to provide better, more accurate code that follows current best practices for the library.

See Better code with tiles for more inspiration on how to use tiles effectively.