Setting up the Agent
For Agent jobs and the daily memory curation, ASIST starts the codex or claude CLI installed on your computer as a child process. Install the one you want to use and sign in to it first. You choose which one to use under “Agent” in the settings. The default is codex.
ASIST does not touch the CLI’s credentials. It does not pass any API key saved in ASIST to the CLI, including keys in environment variables. Set up the CLI’s authentication in the CLI itself. Costs and usage limits apply to the account you signed in with in the CLI.
You can sign in with a ChatGPT account or use an API key. For installation and authentication, follow OpenAI’s Codex CLI documentation.
codex loginOpenAI’s non-interactive mode documentation assumes that scripts use a saved login (as of 2026-09-16).
It works with a sign-in to a Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) or with an API key. For installation and authentication, follow Anthropic’s Claude Code documentation.
claude auth loginAnthropic’s Legal and compliance page allows you to sign in to Claude Code with your own plan, also when another app runs it (as of 2026-10-11).
Terms change. Check the pages above before you use ASIST for work.
On a Mac
Section titled “On a Mac”On a Mac, ASIST looks for the CLI on the same PATH as your terminal and starts it with that PATH. To read the PATH, ASIST starts your login shell ($SHELL) the way a terminal does, so your shell settings such as ~/.zshrc are read too. A CLI installed with npm, nvm, bun or pnpm works as long as it works in your terminal. If you install a CLI after ASIST has started, ASIST looks for it again when you open the settings.
If the shell does not return its PATH within 10 seconds, the “Agent” settings say that the PATH could not be read from your shell, and no job starts. Open a new terminal and check that your shell settings don’t stop with an error or do something slow.
On Windows
Section titled “On Windows”On Windows, install each CLI with its official installer. A CLI installed with npm has only a .cmd file, which ASIST cannot start. If you start a job with a CLI installed with npm, ASIST tells you to reinstall it with the official installer.
On Windows, codex runs only inside codex’s own Windows sandbox. Without the sandbox, a job that writes could also write outside its working folder and reach the network. The sandbox needs a one-time setup with administrator rights: start codex once in a terminal and set up the Windows sandbox as it asks. Until the setup is done, ASIST does not start codex jobs and says why.
claude works the same as on a Mac.
How jobs work and what the confirmation screen shows is covered in Agent jobs.