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Quick Start

docs/guide/getting-started/quick-start.md

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Quick Start

This guide walks you through your first RTK commands after installation.

Prerequisites

RTK is installed and verified:

bash
rtk --version   # rtk x.y.z
rtk gain        # shows token savings dashboard

If not, see Installation.

Step 1: Initialize for your AI assistant

bash
# For Claude Code (global — applies to all projects)
rtk init --global

# For a single project only
cd /your/project && rtk init

This installs the hook that automatically rewrites commands. Restart your AI assistant after this step.

Step 2: Use your tools normally

Once the hook is installed, nothing changes in how you work. Your AI assistant runs commands as usual — the hook intercepts them transparently and rewrites them before execution.

For example, when Claude Code runs cargo test, the hook rewrites it to rtk cargo test before it executes. The LLM receives filtered output with only the failures — not 500 lines of passing tests. You never see or type rtk.

RTK covers all major ecosystems — Git, Cargo/Rust, JavaScript, Python, Go, Ruby, .NET, Docker/Kubernetes, and more. See What RTK Optimizes for the full list.

Step 3: Check your savings

After a few commands, see how much was saved:

bash
rtk gain

Total commands : 12
Input tokens   : 45,230
Output tokens  : 4,890
Saved          : 40,340  (89.2%)

Step 4: Unsupported commands

Commands RTK doesn't recognize run through passthrough — output is unchanged, usage is tracked:

bash
rtk proxy make install

Next steps