Set up and converge

aura setup turns your choices into a reviewed desired state for the coding agents on your machine. Use it for the first installation, when adding an application, or when shared content changes.

Outcome

After setup, selected applications load the same shared instructions and the managed skills and MCP servers you approved. Aura records the selections and its ownership ledger in ~/agents/aura.json.

Run the wizard

Preview the default path without writing.
Terminal window
```
aura setup --dry-run
```
Run the interactive wizard.
Terminal window
```
aura setup
```
Review each stage:
- Applications: choose which detected applications Aura should manage.
- Instructions: keep, link, or consolidate personal instruction files.
- Snippets: preview install-once Markdown additions.
- Skills: inspect the full SKILL.md before installing a tree.
- MCP: confirm server names, transports, credentials, and target applications.
- Baseline: review the final combined plan and apply it once.
Run a check after the write.
Terminal window
```
aura check
```

An unchanged rerun prints Already converged — nothing to do. Aura still restores the manifest’s mode to 0o600 when necessary.

Add one kind of content later

After the first full setup, reopen a focused picker:

aura setup --add snippet
aura setup --add skill
aura setup --add mcp

Each shortcut retains the same preview, confirmation, transaction, backup, and post-setup check.

Interactive and unattended behavior

Command	Prompts	Writes	Intended use
`aura setup`	Yes	After confirmation	First use and reviewed changes
`aura setup --dry-run`	No	No	Preview the proposed defaults
`aura setup --yes`	No	Yes	Known, non-interactive defaults

--yes does not establish first-use repository trust, approve a new or changed skill, append a repository snippet, or first-install a repository MCP server. Those actions require an interactive review.

What just happened?

Setup converts wizard choices into data before it writes anything. Core merges the operations, checks for conflicting targets, locks them, saves a backup, applies the transaction, and rescans. Plugins describe operations but cannot bypass this path.

Common failures

Symptom: setup says both input and output must be terminals.

Cause: an interactive wizard was started from CI or a pipe.

Fix: run it in a terminal, use --dry-run, or use --yes only when its held-back approvals are acceptable.

Symptom: the plan changes after a repository preset edit.

Cause: the trusted repository hash no longer matches.

Fix: rerun interactive setup and review the new preset before accepting it.

Next steps

Manage contentAdd snippets, skills, or MCP servers without rerunning every setup stage.

Undo a setupInspect backups and restore a previous transaction safely.