B.O.S.S.

Start

Your first hour.

Two ways in: a fresh idea, or a repo you already started. Both take about five seconds of setup. Everything after that happens inside Claude Code.

You'll need Node 18+ and Claude Code. The CLI sets the project up; the skills run inside Claude. Nothing else to install — zero dependencies, and no postinstall script to approve.

▸install
pick one — all three put `boss` on your PATH 
npx oyeboss new my-app        # no install; try it first
npm install -g oyeboss        # the usual
brew install ajeshh/boss/boss   # macOS, via the tap
▸path A

Something new

Scaffold it

boss new my-app creates the project, git-inits it, registers it, and starts you in Quickstart with 3 agents and 16 skills.

Open Claude Code

cd my-app then claude — terminal or editor panel. First time? /welcome is about a minute, and it asks where you're starting from so the tone fits.

Point it at the idea

/boss <your idea> — a sentence, a doc, a Google Doc, an Obsidian note, a PDF, or a URL. Already written it down? /import <file|url>. Just want to see something move? /prototype builds the smallest clickable version to react to.

Come back later and run boss status

The one command worth remembering. After a few days away it tells you where you are and what's next.

▸path B

A repo you already started

Don't start over. cd into it and run boss adopt — it reads how far along you already are (a build manifest, source files, tests, CI, a deploy config), prints what it found, and starts you at the mode that matches.

Non-destructive throughout: your files are untouched, and an existing CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md gets a marked block appended rather than replaced. It caps its own guess at MVP on purpose — V1 is a design-system and database commitment, and that's your call, not a machine's. If it reads low, boss unlock <mode> is one command.

Then run /comprehend inside Claude. That's the adopted repo's version of /boss: BOSS reads the actual code, tailors the scaffold, and seeds the venture brain so the conscience starts with real context instead of guessing.

▸where you're starting from

It tunes itself to you

/welcome asks this once. It changes where you start and how fast you climb — nothing else.

this is the first thing you've built Stay in Quickstart a while. Capture ideas, pressure-test one, let the conscience teach you the rhythm. Don't rush to unlock — the next mode will still be there.
you've shipped a couple of small things Building feels possible; what's-worth-finishing less so. Capture freely with /triage — the payoff is /canvas. Unlock MVP when you're actually building, not before.
you've shipped real products before Skip the tour. Your value isn't the scaffolding — it's the conscience catching drift you'd rationalize, and the mentors for the parts that aren't engineering. Move fast through the unlocks.
being wrong has real costs Health, legal, money, safety. Same path, harm lens on early: /ai-failure-states from the start, the canvas's Risks & Harms cell taken seriously, /red-team --humane before anyone relies on it.
▸the way out

Changed your mind?

boss remove previews exactly what would go; --apply does it. It only removes what BOSS wrote — your code, the ideas and decisions you captured, your own skills, and any BOSS file you edited all survive, and your CLAUDE.md keeps everything except BOSS's marked block. boss remove --global takes it off the machine instead; your projects keep working, since the conscience hook runs from the project, not the CLI.

And it hands back the thinking on the way out. If BOSS built up a venture brain about your project — what it understood, what it concluded — that gets exported to docs/venture-brain.md before anything is deleted. You wrote into it and you could edit it, so it leaves with you rather than with the tool.

A clean exit is what makes the entrance safe to try.