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This walkthrough will take you through your first interactions with Indent, showing our core capabilities and how you can use them. It assumes you’ve already completed the Quickstart guide to set up Indent.

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Starting Indent

If you haven’t already, start Indent by navigating to your project directory: 
cd my-project
Then run: 
indent run
This opens a new chat session in your browser. You’ll know Indent is ready when you see the “Connected” status in the center of the screen, indicating that Indent has established a connection to your local environment. Indent web interface showing the connected status

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Running Your First Command

Let’s start with something simple to confirm that Indent can interact with your system. Ask Indent to list the files in your current directory: 
List the files in this directory
Indent will analyze your request and propose running the appropriate command (such as ls -la on Unix systems or dir on Windows). When Indent suggests a command, you’ll see something like this: Indent proposing a command to list files with a confirmation button Use the Ctrl/Cmd-Y shortcut shown or click “Confirm” to execute the command. Indent will run the command locally and display the results directly in the chat.
This ability to execute commands on your behalf is one of Indent’s key features. You no longer need to switch contexts between a chat interface and your terminal, and Indent is able to automatically view the results of the command and take action based on them.

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Understanding Your Codebase

Now let’s see how Indent can string together multiple commands. Try asking: 
What does this project do? Give me a brief overview.
Indent will search through your project files, read their contents, and provide an analysis of what your project does. It might look through README files, documentation, source code, and other files to gather this information. At each step, Indent will show you exactly what it’s doing and why. At this stage, you are in full control of approving or requesting modifications to each step. This simple example shows Indent’s ability to:
  1. Find relevant files in your codebase
  2. Read and understand their contents
  3. Synthesize information from multiple sources

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Modifying Files

Let’s see how Indent can help you create and edit files. Try asking: 
Now create a file called poem.md with a brief poem about this project
Indent will draft and propose creating a new file.
Indent always shows you exactly what changes it’s going to make before it makes them, so you can review file modifications before approving them.
Indent writing a file to the filesystem When you confirm, it will write the file directly to your filesystem; you can run cat poem.md on Unix systems (or type poem.md on Windows) from your terminal, and you’ll see the file contents.

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Keep Going

You’ve now seen the core capability of Indent: combining command execution and file operations into a powerful agentic programming assistant. The best way to get comfortable with Indent is to continue experimenting. Try asking Indent to help with tasks you’re currently working on, tasks you’ve used other tools for, or just do something silly that might make you smile 😃. Improving your skill at using Indent is a process of trial and error, and the more you use it, the more effective you’ll become. Graphic wrapping up the walkthrough

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More Indent

Features

Explore Indent’s full capabilities

Indent Shell

Use Indent directly in your terminal

Indent CI

Integrate Indent into your CI/CD pipeline

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Get in Touch

Get Support

Reach out if you have any questions or feedback