First Conversation

This guide takes you from a fresh install to your first productive interaction with Zeph.

Prerequisites

• Zeph installed and zeph init completed
• Either Ollama running locally (ollama serve), or a Claude/OpenAI API key configured

Start the Agent

zeph

You see a You: prompt. Type a message and press Enter.

Ask About Files

You: What files are in the current directory?

Behind the scenes:

1. Zeph embeds your query and matches the file-ops skill (ranked by cosine similarity)
2. The skill’s instructions are injected into the prompt
3. The agent calls the glob tool to list files
4. You get a structured answer with the directory listing

You did not tell Zeph which skill to use — it figured it out from context.

Run a Command

You: Check disk usage on this machine

Zeph matches the system-info skill and runs df -h via the bash tool. If a command is potentially destructive (like rm or git push --force), Zeph asks for confirmation first:

Execute: rm -rf /tmp/old-cache? [y/N]

See Memory in Action

You: What files did we just look at?

Zeph remembers the full conversation. It answers from context without re-running any commands. With semantic memory enabled (Qdrant), Zeph can also recall relevant context from past sessions.

Useful Slash Commands

Type exit, quit, or press Ctrl-D to stop the agent.

Next Steps

• Configuration Wizard — customize providers, memory, and channels
• Skills — understand how skill matching works
• Tools — what the agent can do with shell, files, and web