Five-minute quickstart

What you need

Rationale runs locally on macOS, Linux, and the published preview targets. You need Git and a shell. Codebase Memory is recommended for structural lookup but optional: without it, Rationale reports degraded coverage and keeps working.

Install

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/Ragosorio/Rationale/releases/download/v0.1.0-beta.2/rationale-installer.sh | sh
rationale --version

To install the companion provider first:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DeusData/codebase-memory-mcp/main/install.sh | bash

Initialize a project

Run these commands from the repository you want to govern:

rationale init
rationale health
rationale install-agent --dry-run
rationale install-agent

init creates .rationale/, preserves the canonical YAML files in Git, and offers agent integration. install-agent writes an idempotent instruction block and registers the MCP server where the detected agent supports it.

Make the first governed change

Ask the agent to locate the target with Codebase Memory, then call prepare_change(target, intent) before a non-trivial edit. After the edit it should call finalize_change(...). That creates a pending proposal when the change contains a high-value signal; it does not approve anything.

Review the proposal yourself:

rationale review

Approval, correction, dispute, revocation, supersession, and authority changes remain interactive human actions.

Verify the installation

rationale --help
rationale --version
rationale health

The CLI emits the documented JSON contract on stdout. Diagnostics belong on stderr, and rationale serve keeps stdout reserved for MCP JSON-RPC messages.