First Coder Project

This is a Coder 0.6.32 guide. For chats and documents, use Conversational setup.

1. Install and activate Coder

Use the install selector, then complete memstrata-coder init in that product’s environment. Do not replace an existing user’s installation or delete an index as a setup shortcut.

2. Register a project

Use Coder’s project setup or its reviewed CLI:

memstrata-coder project add "/absolute/path/to/my-project"
memstrata-coder project list --json

On Windows, supply the actual full Windows project path. Wait until indexing is ready. Time depends on the repository, machine and index state; there is no universal files-per-second promise.

3. Check the two local services

memstrata-coder status
memstrata-coder doctor

The API/MCP service normally uses port 8000; the provider harness normally uses port 8080. Setup can already have started them. If needed, use memstrata-coder api for the API or memstrata-coder start for the harness, without launching duplicate services.

A read-only harness health check is:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8080/
# Example for this release: {"status":"alive","version":"0.6.32"}

4. Connect one supported coding tool

Use HTTP MCP setup to discover list_code_projects and get_code_context. Select the actual project ID, ask one repository question and inspect the returned source paths and context receipt.

MCP context access does not automatically route the host’s model requests through the provider harness. Provider routing is a separate, explicit setup; see the API reference.

5. Interpret telemetry honestly

A successful connection is not proof that a coding request used Coder. Inspect the eligible invocation and context-delivery record. Tokens avoided use a stated counterfactual, not a naive-RAG comparison; local inference is not automatically a dollar saving.