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Quickstart.

From clone to your first agent-written, human-approved asset in about five minutes. Requires Node 20 or newer.

Step 1

Install and run

git clone https://github.com/richardthedesigner/damllm.git cairn
cd cairn
npm install
npm start

The daemon starts on http://localhost:4800 with the web app, and creates its SQLite database at ~/.damllm/loci.db. Want demo data to explore first? Run npm run demo.

Step 2

Register with Claude Code

claude mcp add --scope user cairn -- node $PWD/packages/mcp/dist/index.js

One line. Every Claude Code session on your machine can now read and write your corpus.

Step 3

Register with Claude Desktop

Add this to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config), then restart Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cairn": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/cairn/packages/mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Step 4

First capture

In any registered session, ask your agent to keep something:

> Keep this positioning brief in Cairn under the "positioning" collection.

# the agent calls:
write_asset({ title: "Positioning brief", type: "document",
              collection: "positioning", content: … })
→ created as draft a_x92kd, awaiting your review at localhost:4800

Open the review queue and approve it. Approved is the tier agents read from by default.

Step 5

First retrieval

> What does our positioning brief say about the wedge?

# the agent calls:
search_assets("positioning wedge")   → 1 hit (approved)
get_asset("a_x92kd")                 → the canonical version, with provenance

That is the loop: no re-pasting, no stale copies, and every answer traceable to a reviewed source.

Prefer to try before installing? The browser sandbox runs the whole experience with nothing on your machine.