Quickstart

Waken gives your agent its own machine in the cloud. It keeps its files, its installed packages and its conversation. It sleeps when nobody talks to it, and wakes in a fraction of a second on the next message. This page takes you from nothing to a running agent in about two minutes.

1. Install the CLI

curl -fsSL https://waken.sh/install.sh | sh

The script downloads one binary for macOS or Linux (and WSL on Windows), checks its checksum, and puts it in ~/.local/bin. Prefer to stay in the browser? Everything below also works from the dashboard.

2. Sign in

In the dashboard, open Developers and create an API key. Then:

waken login
# Paste your API key: wk_...
# Signed in. 0 agent(s) on this account.

3. Deploy a folder

An agent is a folder: instructions, files, scripts, whatever it needs. Waken runs a harness in it (Claude Code by default) with your own model key.

mkdir bookkeeper && cd bookkeeper
echo "You keep my invoices in order. Files live in ./invoices." > CLAUDE.md
 
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
waken deploy
# Deploying bookkeeper...
# Agent 4ec0b05a running in 0.1s
# 1 files uploaded

Your key goes to the agent's memory, never to its files, and it is never shown again. No Anthropic key? Use another provider: see Models and keys.

4. Talk to it

waken chat "What can you do for me?"
 
# or interactively
waken chat

Close your laptop. The agent stays where it is. After five minutes without activity it goes to sleep, and the next message wakes the same machine, same files, same conversation, in well under a second.

5. Rewind when it breaks something

A checkpoint is taken every 15 minutes while the agent runs, and you can take one yourself before anything risky. A rewind restores the whole machine: files, packages and the conversation.

waken checkpoint
waken checkpoints
waken restore            # the latest one
waken restore 20260920-161728-38e2

Where to go next

• CLI: every command.
• HTTP API: one agent per customer, from your own backend.
• Desktops and MCP: give an agent a real screen and a browser.
• Container images: run your own agent instead of a harness.