Docs / AEP / Getting Started
Account, install, first project, and the full build → review → ship loop — start to finish.
This walkthrough covers the whole path: creating an account, installing AEP, standing up your first project, and running the milestone → build → review → remediate cycle that AEP is built around. If you only need a narrower quickstart, see the Desktop App Quickstart or CLI Quickstart instead.
Head to the login page and switch to the Sign Up tab. You'll need an email address and a password (12 characters minimum). This account is what your Desktop App license and any CLI API keys are attached to.
The Desktop App is the primary way to use AEP. Get the installer for your OS from the Desktop App download page:
The CLI is a separate, optional download for scripting and automation — most people using the Desktop App interactively don't need it. If you do, grab it from the CLI download page:
Skip this step if you're not installing the CLI. Otherwise, extract the archive and put the aep binary somewhere your shell can find it:
PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin), or add its folder to PATH in your shell profile (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc)..zip, then add its folder to your Path environment variable under System Properties → Environment Variables.Open a new terminal window afterward so the updated PATH takes effect.
The CLI authenticates with an API key, separate from your account password — this is what lets scripts and automation connect without an interactive login. Generate one from Account Settings → API Keys → New Key, then set it in your shell and connect:
See the CLI Quickstart for the full authentication reference.
Open AEP from wherever your OS installed it. On first launch, it prompts you to activate a license — that's the next step.
If your team already has a seat, an admin can invite you from Members & Seats — accepting the invite generates a redeemable license key automatically. Paste it into the activation prompt to bind the license to this machine.
No team yet? Start a free trial to get a key of your own.
The first time you run a skill, AEP walks you through connecting a project: point it at a directory — a new folder or an existing codebase — and it creates a project record scoped to that folder. Every milestone, epic, story, and review you run afterward is tracked against that project.
From the project, start a new milestone and describe in plain language what you want to build. AEP drafts a name, a short abbreviation, a description, a category, tags, and a first pass of ideas (typically 4–8) — all saved as a draft ("WiP") milestone you can edit before committing to it.
Once the milestone's ideas look right, promote it from draft to active. From there:
Once an epic's stories are complete, run a review to get a cumulative diff check against type-specific checklists (error handling, input validation, auth, and more), returned as ranked findings. Separately, from the Security tab, run a Code, Access, or Platform scan to catch hardcoded secrets, RBAC issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations before they ship.
Work down anything the reviews turned up — bugs from the Code Review tab, security tickets from the Security tab — then loop back to step 8 and create your next milestone. This build → review → remediate cycle is the core loop AEP is designed around.