Quick Start

Get from zero to capturing ideas in minutes. This guide walks you through signing up, creating your first idea from the web and CLI, and optionally connecting Claude AI.

1. Sign up at neuralrepo.com

   Head to neuralrepo.com and create your account. You can sign up with:

   • GitHub — recommended for developers
   • Google
   • Apple
   • Magic link — passwordless email login

   No credit card required. Every new account starts with a 30-day Pro trial. The free tier includes 50 ideas and full access to all capture channels.

2. Create your first idea from the web dashboard

   Once signed in, click + Capture at the top of the left sidebar. The capture form asks for:

   • Title — a short, descriptive name for your idea (required)
   • Notes — optional details in Markdown
   • Status — captured (the default), exploring, or building
   • Tags — type a name and press Enter, or click one of your existing tags

   Hit Capture and your first idea is live. Duplicate detection runs a few seconds later in the background, so a possible-duplicate pair shows up in Duplicates and Review rather than blocking the save.

3. Install the CLI

   Open your terminal and install the NeuralRepo CLI globally:

   npm install -g @neuralconfig/nrepo

   Verify the installation:

   nrepo --version

4. Log in from the CLI

   Authenticate the CLI with your NeuralRepo account:

   nrepo login

   This opens your browser for OAuth authentication. Once approved, the CLI stores your session locally in ~/.config/neuralrepo/config.json.

   Tip

   nrepo login works on every plan — the browser flow mints a CLI key for you. To paste a key you generated yourself instead, run nrepo login --api-key (a bare flag, no value) and paste it at the prompt. Generating keys by hand in Settings ▸ API Keys is a Pro feature.

5. Capture an idea from the CLI

   Push your first idea directly from the terminal:

   nrepo push "Build a habit tracker app" --tag side-project --status exploring

   You should see output confirming the idea was created:

   ✓ Idea captured
   #42 exploring  ⬡ Build a habit tracker app [side-project]
   
     Processing: embeddings, dedup, and auto-tagging queued

   The number after # is the idea number you use in every other command.

6. Search your ideas

   Find ideas by meaning:

   nrepo search "habit tracker"

   nrepo search runs semantic search — vector similarity, so it matches meaning rather than words. Every plan gets it; the free plan gets 10 semantic searches a month and then falls back to keyword search automatically.

   Caution

   If semantic search finds nothing above the score threshold, nrepo search returns no results — it does not silently retry as a keyword search. Search the web app in keyword mode (or call the API with mode=keyword) when you know the exact wording.

7. Connect Claude AI via MCP (optional)

   If you use Claude, you can let it read and write ideas directly through the Model Context Protocol.

   Claude.ai

   In Claude.ai settings, add a new remote MCP server with this URL:

   https://neuralrepo.com/mcp/

   On first use, Claude will prompt you to authorize NeuralRepo via OAuth.

   Claude Code

   Add the MCP server from your terminal:

   claude mcp add --transport http neuralrepo https://neuralrepo.com/mcp/

   The next time you start a Claude Code session, it will have access to your NeuralRepo ideas.

   Once connected, you can say things like “Save this as an idea in NeuralRepo” or “Search my ideas for authentication patterns” and Claude handles the rest.

8. Try the AI agent (Pro)

   On Pro, the NeuralRepo web app includes a built-in AI agent. Open the Agent tab in the sidebar to start a conversation, or open the Mind Map and click the agent icon in the bottom-right corner.

   Select a model — the Workers AI models (GPT-OSS 120B, the default, and Qwen 30B) work without any API key. For the Anthropic models (Sonnet, Haiku, Opus), add your own key first in Settings ▸ AI Providers.

   Try asking:

   • “What am I working on?”
   • “Find connections between my recent ideas”
   • “Brainstorm 3 variations of my top idea”

   See the AI Agent docs for the full list of capabilities.

Next Steps

Core Concepts Understand ideas, statuses, tags, relations, and the idea graph.

CLI Reference Explore all available nrepo commands.

MCP Integration Deep dive into the Claude AI integration.

Plans & Pricing Compare free and Pro features.