Quickstart
Ten minutes from now, your repository will have an evidence chain and you will have verified its first entry yourself. Nothing here requires talking to us — that is the point of the product.
What you need: a git repository, Node or Bun, and an OLOBOLO organization token (created in the dashboard under Settings → Sources).
1. Connect the source (2 min)
Section titled “1. Connect the source (2 min)”Two ways to feed the chain — use either or both:
- GitHub App (server-side): install the OLOBOLO GitHub App on the repository. Pushes, reviews and CI results start flowing as chain events with no local setup.
- CLI collector (local, recommended for AI-assisted work): the CLI reads the actual commit on your machine — patch fingerprint, line counts, agent trailers — and sends only metadata.
olobolo init --api-url https://api.olobolo.com --org <org> --repo <repo> --token <token>olobolo install-hooksinstall-hooks adds a post-commit shim that chains to any hooks you
already have (husky included). A recording failure never blocks a commit —
lost network is a buffered event, not lost evidence.
2. Make a commit (1 min)
Section titled “2. Make a commit (1 min)”Commit as you always do. If an AI agent wrote the change, carry it in the trailer — this is what makes the chain answer who wrote your code:
git commit -m "Add rate limiting to the login endpoint" \ -m "Authored-By: claude-code/claude-fable-5" \ -m "Spec-Ref: SPEC-042"The hook records a change.authored event (actor, patch fingerprint,
line counts) and — because of the Spec-Ref trailer — a spec.linked
event with the spec document hashed locally at link time.
3. See it in the chain (1 min)
Section titled “3. See it in the chain (1 min)”olobolo statusshows your buffer and the remote chain head. In the dashboard, the entry appears in the Evidence chain feed within seconds — actor, hash prefix and spec-link status.
4. Verify it yourself (3 min)
Section titled “4. Verify it yourself (3 min)”Never take our word for anything — that includes this quickstart:
curl -o chain-export.jsonl https://api.olobolo.com/v1/export/<repo>olobolo-verify verify chain-export.jsonlThe verifier recomputes every hash and every link from the export alone.
chain intact from a tool you ran on your machine beats any claim we
could make. Deeper dive: Verify without trusting us.
What just happened
Section titled “What just happened”Your repository now records who — human or agent — authored every change, what was reviewed and tested, and none of your code left your machine when the CLI collected it: fingerprints and counts only, as the format mandates. From here: