Getting Started
Helm (the helm of a ship — the wheel that steers direction) is a CLI tool that manages the lifecycle of AI agent pipeline sessions. It provides visibility into pipeline progress, session continuity across Claude Code conversations, and state checkpointing.
What is Helm?
Helm is a state manager, not an executor. Agent logic lives in markdown definitions and runs inside Claude Code. The CLI manages session state, displays progress, and bridges the gap between conversations.
helm init
helm status
helm resume
helm saveInstall
curl -fsSL https://getkaze.dev/helm/install.sh | bashThis installs the latest release to ~/.local/bin/helm. To update later, run helm update.
From source
git clone https://github.com/getkaze/helm.git
cd helm
make buildBinary is output to bin/helm. Add it to your PATH or run directly.
Within Claude Code
Use the /helm slash command to activate the orchestrator. The CLI complements Claude Code — use it standalone to check status and checkpoint state.
Initialize a project
helm initThis creates helm.yaml (committed) and .helm/ (runtime state, not committed).
Start the pipeline
Inside Claude Code, invoke:
/helmHelm detects whether your project is greenfield (new) or brownfield (existing) and routes to the correct first agent.
Greenfield flow
scout → research → planning → architect → roadmap → breakdown → review → build → verify → shipBrownfield flow
survey → research → planning → architect → roadmap → breakdown → review → build → verify → shipWhat you get
- Discover phase: Scout or Survey analyzes your project, Research validates findings
- Plan phase: Planning creates the PRD, Architect defines the architecture, Roadmap sequences delivery, Breakdown creates tasks, Review validates traceability
- Build phase: Build implements tasks against acceptance criteria
- Quality phase: Verify validates implementation against the spec
- Deploy phase: Ship handles release and deployment