Rusty IDE
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Quickstart

Connect a model, open a workspace, and run your first task in about five minutes.

This walks you from a fresh install to a reviewed change.

1. Connect a model

Rusty needs at least one model provider.

  1. Click LLM Integrations in the left rail to open the LLM Connection Center.
  2. Choose a provider from the list: OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter and others.
  3. Paste your API Authorization Key.
  4. Click Save Configuration, then fetch the provider's model catalog so its models appear in pickers.

No key handy? You can sign in with an existing GitHub Copilot or OpenAI Codex subscription instead, or point Rusty at a local OpenAI-compatible server such as Ollama. All of these are covered in Model providers.

2. Open a workspace

Click Open Workspace and choose the folder of a project, ideally one that is a Git repository so you can review changes with source control. Rusty creates a .rusty/ folder there for chats, workflows and other project data.

3. Run your first task

  1. Click Agent Mode.
  2. Pick a model in the model picker. If you have set up automatic model selection, you can choose AUTO instead.
  3. Above the message box, the Mode menu shows what the chat will follow. New chats start as a Single agent, one agent loop that suits a quick answer or a small edit. For a bigger job, choose a workflow such as Plan, build, verify, or a stage such as Research & analyze if you want to read the findings before anything is built. With OpenRouter connected you can also choose Auto and let Rusty pick. See Workflows.
  4. Describe the task in the message box. Type @ to reference a file.

While the agent works you will see each step's progress, and every tool call it makes. When it wants to run a shell command, Rusty asks first:

  • Deny refuses the command.
  • Allow once runs just this command.
  • Allow this session allows the program (or the exact command) for the rest of this agent session, in memory only.

See Permissions & safety for how these prompts work.

4. Review and commit

Open Source Control to see what changed. Open a file's diff, stage what you want, write a commit message and press ⌘ Enter to commit.

Next steps

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