Quickstart

This page takes you from a fresh install to your first answer.

If sieve is not on your machine yet, install it first:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/iamalvisng/sieve/releases/latest/download/sieve-cli-installer.sh | sh

1. Build the index

Go to the root of a repo. Run:

sieve build .

Sieve reads your code and writes an index folder named sieve/. The build needs no API key. Sieve adds sieve/ to your .gitignore. The index is a local cache.

2. Ask a question

A query does not build the index. If no index exists, Sieve prints “No index here yet. Run sieve build . first.”

sieve ask "how does login work"

Sieve returns ranked symbols with exact file:line spans. Add --source to see the code inline.

3. Find who calls a symbol

sieve callers createServer --depth 2

4. Search for text

sieve grep "handleHMRUpdate"

Sieve groups each hit under the symbol that holds it.

5. See your change reach

sieve blast

This shows what depends on the lines of your working-tree diff.

6. Wire Sieve into your agent

sieve init

Without --yes, init shows a picker. Without --global, init writes only inside the repo. See Claude Code for the details. To see the plan first, run sieve init --dry-run.

Stay in sync

Query commands refresh the index before they answer. Pass --no-refresh to skip that. To fail a CI job when the index is stale, run sieve check.