Quick start
Install Atelier, connect Claude, spin up your first isolated agent, and land its work — in about five minutes.
1. Install
Download Atelier for Mac from the home page, or install it with Homebrew:
2. Connect Claude
Atelier drives Claude Code under the hood. If you are already signed in to Claude Code on this Mac, there is nothing to do. Otherwise a Connect to Claude screen asks for an Anthropic API key (sk-ant-…) — it is stored locally and can be changed later in Settings ▸ Claude Code.
3. Open a folder
Click Open a folder in the sidebar and pick a project. The folder becomes a workspace. Git repositories get the full branch-and-worktree treatment; a plain folder works too — agents simply run in place.
4. Start your first agent
Press ⌘D, or click + next to the workspace and choose Agent. In the new-agent dialog:
- Pick where it works. Choose New worktree to give the agent its own isolated copy of the repo — parallel agents never trip over each other. (More in Isolated worktrees.)
- Type the opening prompt — attach files or images if it helps.
- Optionally set the model, reasoning effort, and permission mode, or assign existing to-do tasks. Then hit Start agent.
The agent appears in the sidebar under its branch, with a pulsing dot while it works. Fresh worktrees run a one-time setup first — the composer shows "Waiting for worktree to setup…" and your prompt is sent automatically the moment setup finishes.
5. Watch it work
The transcript streams the agent's reasoning, tool calls, and diffs live. If it needs a permission or asks you a question, the prompt docks right above the composer and the sidebar's required actions banner lights up. Open a terminal tab beside it (+ ▸ Terminal) to run your dev server in the same worktree while the agent builds:
6. Review and land the work
Open the Files panel (top-right toggle) to see every change grouped by state. Click any file for the full diff, stage what you want, then Commit — and Merge to bring the branch into your base branch locally. That's the whole loop: dispatch, watch, review, merge. Details in Review & merge.