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Symbiotic Code is a security-first coding agent that runs in your terminal. To use it you will need:
  • A terminal: Use the default terminal, or a modern terminal emulator like iTerm or Warp. It can also run in an IDE terminal (e.g., VS Code terminal).
  • A Symbiotic Security account: Ask your admin or Symbiotic point of contact for access.

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Installation

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CLI install

Install Symbiotic Code with your preferred package manager:
You can also use pnpm install -g @symbioticsec/code, yarn global add @symbioticsec/code, or bun install -g @symbioticsec/code.
Check that node and npm are properly installed:
If they are not installed, install them and retry. See also Troubleshooting.
To launch Symbiotic Code, use the symbiotic command in your terminal:
You can also pass a project path (symbiotic path/to/project), continue your last session with symbiotic -c, or pick a model with symbiotic -m provider/model. See Terminal UI for a tour of the interface, and Common commands for all CLI commands.

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VSCode IDE extension install

Download our extension and install it in all VSCode based IDEs. See IDE Extension.

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JetBrains IDE support

You can use Symbiotic Code in your JetBrains IDE through ACP. In the AI Chat window, click the three dots, then Add Custom Agent. This opens ~/.jetbrains/acp.json, where you add Symbiotic Code under agent_servers:
acp.json
If the IDE can’t find the binary, use its absolute path (run which symbiotic) as command.

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Authentication

A Symbiotic Security account is required. Create one for free at app.symbioticsec.ai. If you don’t have access, contact your administrator or Symbiotic point of contact.
On first launch, Symbiotic Code opens an authentication dialog:
1

Sign in in your browser

Your browser opens the Symbiotic Portal to authorize Symbiotic Code. If it doesn’t open, click the link in the dialog (press c to copy it).
2

Pick a model

Once authorized, the dialog closes automatically and you can choose one of the Symbiotic models.
Run /connect, select Symbiotic, then API token. Open the link shown in the dialog (app.symbioticsec.ai/settings/api-token), create or copy a token, paste it and press Enter.For non-interactive environments (CI, containers), you can instead set the SYMBIOTIC_API_KEY environment variable.
Credentials are stored in ~/.local/share/symbiotic/auth.json, readable only by your user.

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Updates

Symbiotic Code detects whether it was installed with npm, pnpm, yarn, Bun, or the install script and uses the same method when checking for and applying updates. To update manually, run symbiotic upgrade (or symbiotic upgrade <version>). Set "autoupdate": false (or "notify") in your global configuration file (~/.config/symbiotic/symbiotic.json) to control automatic updates, or set SYMBIOTIC_DISABLE_AUTOUPDATE=1.