Getting Started

Get up and running with Chub in under 5 minutes. This guide covers installation, basic commands, and setting up your project for team sharing.

Install

Pick your preferred method:

npm

npm install -g @nrl-ai/chub

pip

pip install chub

Cargo

cargo install chub

Homebrew

brew install nrl-ai/tap/chub

See the full Installation guide for binary downloads and platform-specific instructions.

Verify it works:

chub --version

Search for docs

Chub serves curated API documentation from a public registry of 1,553+ docs. Search for anything:

chub search "stripe payments"

  1. stripe/api            Stripe API reference           ★ 0.92
  2. stripe/webhooks       Stripe webhook handling         ★ 0.78
  3. stripe/checkout       Stripe Checkout integration     ★ 0.71

Fetch a doc

Grab a specific doc by ID. Use --lang to get language-specific content:

chub get openai/chat --lang python

This outputs the full markdown doc — ready to be consumed by an AI agent or read by a human.

# Other examples
chub get stripe/api --lang javascript
chub get nextjs/app-router --version 15.0
chub get openai/chat --lang python --version 4.0

List all docs

chub list

Use --json with any command for machine-readable output:

chub list --json

Set up MCP for your AI agent

Chub includes a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. This is how AI agents like Claude and Cursor access docs automatically.

Claude Code (.mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chub": {
      "command": "chub",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chub": {
      "command": "chub",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Once configured, your AI agent can search and fetch docs without any manual commands.

Initialize a project

Set up team sharing by creating a .chub/ directory in your project:

chub init

This creates:

my-project/
├── .chub/
│   ├── config.yaml        # Project config
│   ├── pins.yaml          # Pinned docs
│   ├── annotations/       # Team-shared annotations
│   ├── context/           # Custom project docs
│   └── profiles/          # Named context profiles

Auto-detect dependencies

Use --from-deps to scan package.json, Cargo.toml, requirements.txt, etc. and auto-pin matching docs:

chub init --from-deps

Commit .chub/ to git so the whole team shares the same context. Personal settings stay in ~/.chub/.

Pin docs for your team

Lock specific doc versions so every team member and AI agent uses the same reference:

chub pin openai/chat --lang python --version 4.0 --reason "Use v4 streaming API"
chub pin stripe/api --lang javascript

List and fetch pinned docs:

chub pins              # list all pins
chub get --pinned      # fetch all pinned docs at once

Three-tier config

Chub uses a layered config system — no tier is required:

~/.chub/config.yaml          # Tier 1 — personal defaults
    ↓ overridden by
.chub/config.yaml            # Tier 2 — project config (shared)
    ↓ overridden by
.chub/profiles/<name>.yaml   # Tier 3 — role/task profile

What to learn next

Now that you have Chub installed, explore the features that matter to your workflow:

If you want to...	Read
Understand why Chub exists	Why Chub
Lock doc versions for your team	Doc Pinning
Give different roles different context	Context Profiles
Share team knowledge in git	Team Annotations
Add custom project docs	Project Context
Auto-detect deps and pin docs	Dep Auto-Detection
Sync CLAUDE.md / .cursorrules	Agent Config Sync
See all CLI commands	CLI Reference
Configure Chub	Configuration
Connect AI agents via MCP	MCP Server