First launch

On the very first launch, Effortless does not know who you are yet. Before showing you the workspace picker, it takes you through a short assistant: your profile, deploying Effortless into your AI tools, then your first workspace.

The startup screen

At every launch, the mascot shows for a moment while the app loads your profile, then fades out. Then:

• if you already have a profile, you land on the picker (Open a workspace);
• otherwise, the first-launch assistant opens.

The first-launch assistant

At the top, four numbered dots show where you are. At the bottom, Back returns to the previous step; Next moves on; Later skips an optional step.

1. Welcome

"Welcome to Effortless" introduces the app and reminds you that everything stays on your machine (~/.effortless). Click Get started.

2. Create your profile

A local identity, no account. It signs your decisions, your specs and your commits.

• Name: required.
• Email: required here, in the name@domain.dev format.
• Default author: required, "the signature of your work".

The Your signature box previews how your name will appear, for instance on a decision. This step cannot be skipped: Next stays greyed out until the name, email and author are valid, and it is the button that saves the profile.

3. Deploy Effortless into your tools

This step installs the Effortless MCP server and its skills into the AI assistants detected on your machine (Claude Code, opencode…). It is the same panel as Preferences › MCP & Skills: select the assistants, then Deploy. See Profile and preferences.

If an older installation is detected, a "Legacy installation detected" banner offers to migrate it.

You can skip this step with Later and deploy from the preferences whenever you like.

4. Your first workspace

A workspace is an Effortless project.

• Open a folder…: pick a folder that already holds an Effortless project;
• Create a workspace…: pick a folder, Effortless initializes it.

Either way, the workspace opens in a tab and the assistant closes. Finish (or Later) closes the assistant without opening anything: you then land on the picker.

Replay the introduction

Preferences › Getting started › Replay the introduction replays the assistant. Your profile already exists: the identity step is then prefilled.

With an AI agent

An agent has no first-launch assistant. effortless_deploy does the job of step 3, and effortless_init creates a workspace.