Quickstart

This walks you from a fresh account to Claude Code reading your canonical collection. About five minutes. Prefer not to author anything yet? Skip to the built-in example.

1. Create your account

On the sign-up page, enter your Name, Email, and Password, then Create account.

2. Name your organization

The first time you sign in you’re asked for an organization name. This is your team’s container. Corpus creates one default project inside it automatically — that’s where your documents, collections, and the MCP endpoint live. You won’t see a project selector unless you ever have more than one.

3. Write your first document

Go to Documents → Document (the + button). Give it a Title and write Markdown in the body. For example:

# Backend conventions

- All HTTP input is validated with Zod at the boundary.
- Errors extend AppError; never throw raw strings.
- Prefer async/await; no floating promises.

Click Create. The title becomes a stable slug (backend-conventions), and this is version 1.

4. Build a collection

Go to Collections → Collection. Give it a Name (e.g. backend-agent) and an optional Description, then Create collection.

On the collection page, use Add to this collection to search for the document you just wrote and click Add. Added documents land on-demand — the agent sees them in the outline and pulls them by path when relevant. If a document should be pre-loaded into every read_collection call (brand voice, a compliance notice, the core architecture rules), flip its Always include switch. Drag the handle to reorder; that’s the sequence the agent sees. See Collections for the always-include budget and when to split.

5. Connect this collection

On the Collection page (where you just attached documents), click Connect this collection. Corpus creates (or reuses) the Connection for this Collection and shows the setup snippet. The agent will reach only this Collection — no other documents in the project.

Use a per-Connection local server name so multiple Collections from the same client don’t overwrite each other:

claude mcp add \
  --transport http \
  --scope project \
  corpus-backend-agent \
  https://your-corpus-host/mcp

--scope project writes the connection to a .mcp.json file at your repo root, so it’s committed and shared with everyone who works in that repo — the right choice when a whole team’s agents should read the same Collection. The other scopes are local (the default: private to you, this directory only) and user (available to you across all your projects). Drop the flag to keep the connection to yourself.

Run it in your terminal. In Claude Code, run /mcp and complete the sign-in. The consent screen asks which Collection to grant — pick backend-agent (Corpus pre-selects the one you just clicked Connect on). The agent now reads exactly that Collection’s documents and nothing else.

6. Use it

Ask your agent to use it. For example, in Claude Code:

Work from the corpus collection you’re connected to. Read its always-included guidance, browse the outline, and pull on-demand documents when relevant.

The agent reads the always-included documents with read_collection, browses the Collection’s outline, and reads on-demand documents by path as needed. Edit a document in Corpus and the agent picks up the new version on its next call — no re-paste, no reconnect.

Start from the built-in example instead

Don’t want to author a document first? On an empty project, the home screen offers Load our example — click it to populate the project with demo data for a fictional subscription product (Marlow), including two ready-made collections, Sales and Support.

Connect the Sales collection exactly as in step 5 (use a server name like corpus-sales), then smoke-test it:

What documents are in my Sales collection?

You should see something like:

Your Sales collection contains 3 documents:

• refund-policy.md — Refund Policy
• product.md — Product
• brand-voice.md — Brand Voice

Then put the collection to work — the point is that the agent treats it as the source of truth, not just a file listing:

Using only the guidance in my Sales collection, draft a cold outreach email to a 34-year-old pediatric nurse who joined the Marlow waitlist last month but hasn’t subscribed yet.

Next steps

• Documents — frontmatter, versions, conflict resolution, importing existing markdown.
• Collections — ordering, the always-include budget, and what the agent actually receives.
• Connect your agent — Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, and API-key auth for non-OAuth clients.
• Recipes — patterns that work well in practice.