# quickstart

A managed cloud VM for your project, on your phone. Your coding agent sets it up; you approve a few things.
## What you're setting up

Telescope gives each of your projects a **managed cloud VM that runs your whole stack**: the web app, its APIs, its workers. You open it from your phone, at real desktop size. Once it's set up, your day looks like this:

1. Ask your coding agent for a change, from your phone or anywhere.
2. The agent makes the change.
3. Open Telescope on your phone. The VM pulls the change and you see the running app.

Telescope is set up for Claude Code today. See [what's supported](supported.md) for the rest.

## Set it up

You need the repo cloned on your laptop and Claude Code installed. In Claude Code, add the Telescope plugin:

```
/plugin marketplace add frederickrohn/telescope-plugin
/plugin install telescope@telescope
```

Then, inside your repo, ask:

```
Set up this repo on Telescope
```

Claude takes it from there. It installs the `telescope` command (it asks first), signs you in, reads your repo to work out what needs to run, and starts your VM. You only step in for three things:

- **Approve what gets copied.** Claude shows you which env files it will send to your VM, by variable name only. Use dev or test keys here, since clicks on your phone are real.
- **Give Telescope read access to the repo.** The first time, a GitHub page opens. Pick **Only select repositories**, choose this repo, install, then press Enter in the terminal.
- **Add it to your phone.** A QR code opens at the end. Scan it, then in Safari tap **Share** → **Add to Home Screen**, with **Open as Web App** on.

The first setup takes a few minutes. Claude also offers two small things so your agent's work shows up:

- adding a short note to your repo's `CLAUDE.md`, so your agent's changes reach Telescope without getting in the way of your regular feature branches;
- checking that the Claude GitHub App can push to the repo.

If your app has sign-in, Claude tells you the one URL to add to your provider. See [your stack](your-stack.md).

## After that, just ask

The plugin also teaches Claude to manage Telescope for you. Say things like:

- "Delete the Telescope VM for my-app."
- "I changed my .env, update the preview."
- "Add my iPad to the preview."

More in [using Telescope](using.md).

## Without an agent

Prefer to run it yourself?

```bash
npm install -g usetelescope
telescope login
cd your-repo
telescope up
```

See [commands](commands.md) for everything else.