Install

This guide covers installing the Fab Kit CLIs and their companion utilities, plus the install-specific notes worth knowing before you set up a project.

For the conceptual overview and the 6-stage pipeline, see the project README. Once you are installed, head to the Workflows guide to learn how to drive the pipeline.

Install the CLI

Fab Kit installs via the shll toolkit bootstrap (macOS and Linux):

curl -fsSL https://shll.ai/install | sh -s -- fab-kit

Installs fab-kit (plus the shll meta-CLI) via Homebrew, handling tap trust automatically. To install the entire shll toolkit instead:

curl -fsSL https://shll.ai/install | sh

shll.ai is the canonical install reference for every toolkit tool. The fab-kit install puts two CLIs on your PATH:

Binary	Role
`fab`	The router — dispatches every subcommand to the right tool
`fab-kit`	Workspace lifecycle: `init`, `upgrade-repo`, `sync`

Two independent companion projects (each with its own release cadence) pair with fab-kit and install via shll install (see shll.ai):

shll install wt idea

Binary	Role
`wt`	Worktree manager — isolates each change in its own git worktree
`idea`	Per-repo idea backlog (`fab/backlog.md`) that feeds `/fab-new`

They are recommended, not required: fab degrades gracefully when they are absent. wt is needed for the worktree flows — fab batch new/switch and the operator’s agent spawning stop upfront with an install hint (wt is required for 'fab batch new' — install it via: brew install sahil87/tap/wt) rather than failing mid-run — while an absent idea costs nothing (/fab-new reads fab/backlog.md directly). See their repos at sahil87/wt and sahil87/idea.

Install the companion utilities

fab shells out to a few single-binary utilities (per the project’s “pure prompt play” principle — no runtime, no SDK):

brew install yq jq gh direnv

Tool	Why fab needs it
yq	YAML processing for `.status.yaml` and config/schema files
jq	JSON processing during the settings merge in `fab sync`
gh	GitHub CLI — drives releases and the PR workflow (`/git-pr`, `/git-pr-review`)
direnv	Auto-loads `.envrc` to set workspace environment variables per directory

Two post-install steps:

Authenticate gh so the PR commands can talk to GitHub:
```
gh auth login
```
Add the direnv shell hook so .envrc is picked up automatically. Follow the per-shell instructions at the direnv hook docs (a one-line addition to your shell rc file). The first time you enter a fab workspace, run direnv allow to trust it.

Optional: shell completion

Activate tab-completion for fab in your shell’s rc file:

eval "$(fab shell-init zsh)"   # or bash / fish

This works from any directory — no fab project required. If you prefer a static completion script on disk instead of the eval hook, generate one with fab completion <shell>.

Developing Fab Kit itself

If you are building the binaries from source or contributing, you also need:

brew install go just

Tool	Why
Go	Builds the binaries from source (`src/go/`)
just	Task runner for the build, test, and release recipes

Contributor setup and release mechanics live in the repo’s CONTRIBUTING.md.

Set up a project

Once the CLIs and utilities above are on your PATH, the project-setup flow itself — fab init for a new project, fab init/fab sync + /docs-hydrate-memory to onboard an existing repo with prior docs, and fab upgrade-repo + /fab-setup migrations to update — is covered step-by-step in the README’s Quick Start → Install. This page deliberately does not restate it: the same content is pulled to the site from the README, so duplicating it here would render twice.

Two install-specific notes worth calling out:

fab sync re-deploys skills, scaffolds structure, and syncs hooks without changing the pinned version — run it on its own right after cloning a repo that already uses Fab Kit. It also runs automatically in every new worktree created by wt create.
Fab’s deployed skill copies under .claude/skills/ (and the other agent targets) are ignored via a generated per-target .gitignore, so each developer deploys them locally with fab sync — they do not arrive with a git clone.

Verify your install

Run the doctor to check every prerequisite (git, yq, the direnv hook, shell completion, etc.) and diagnose common setup issues:

fab doctor

For runtime troubleshooting beyond install (a stage failing mid-way, a /fab-setup not recognized, agent producing bad code), see the README’s Troubleshooting section.

Once fab doctor is green, continue to the Workflows guide to run your first change through the pipeline.