BYOK Claude Code skill
The BYOK ("bring your own key") path runs the same auto-instrument procedure as the hosted UI, but entirely inside your Claude Code session against your own Anthropic key. No GitHub App, no Everscribe network calls during the scan, no server-side agent — just a markdown skill Claude Code reads and follows.
Use this when your source code can't leave your machine, when you'd rather not connect a GitHub App, or when you simply prefer the terminal.
Want a dry run first? Clone github.com/everscribe/ai-assisted-setup-demo and invoke
/everscribe-setupagainst it. It's a deliberately un-instrumented multi-tenant SaaS demo we maintain as a no-stakes target — you'll see the full procedure end-to-end against a known-good codebase before pointing it at your real repo.
What you need
- Claude Code installed and signed in with your Anthropic account
- The
esCLI to download the skill (or you can downloadSKILL.mdfrom the docs manually) - A project on Everscribe with an ingest API key — see Generate an API key
Install the skill
es skills download setup
Writes the skill markdown to ~/.claude/skills/everscribe-setup/SKILL.md. Restart Claude Code and the skill becomes available as the slash command /everscribe-setup.
To browse what's available without installing:
es skills list
See CLI · Skills for the full command reference.
Run the skill
Open your repo in Claude Code and invoke:
/everscribe-setup
The skill walks through a fixed procedure:
- Fetch the supported-SDKs manifest from everscribe.io — Claude reads it to know which languages have shipping SDKs.
- Detect your project's language by looking at markers like
go.mod,package.json, etc. If your service is in a language we don't yet ship an SDK for, the skill stops cleanly with a request-language link. - Ask which domains to instrument — auth / billing / admin / data / etc. Press enter for "all security-relevant."
- Ask the embed question — yes/no on whether to also wire up the audit-trail web component + a tenant-scoped embed-token endpoint.
- Verify your env vars — checks for
EVERSCRIBE_PROJECT_IDandEVERSCRIBE_API_KEYin your environment. If missing, points you at the dashboard to mint a key. The skill never reads, stores, or transmits the plaintext key. - Discover handlers — Claude greps for framework patterns, reads handler files, builds a candidate list with event-name proposals + confidence levels per handler.
- Refine via Claude Code chat — same conversational interface as the hosted UI's chat pane, just in your terminal. "Exclude the admin handlers", "rename user.signup to account.created", "why low confidence on handleRefund?".
- Generate the diff — Claude uses its native Edit tool to apply the changes. Uses
everscribe.NewFromEnv(...)— never embeds plaintext keys. - Commit to a new branch without touching your working tree — runs
git commit-tree+git update-refso the diff lands oneverscribe/setup-<timestamp>while your checkout stays clean. - Offers to open the PR with
gh— if you have the GitHub CLI installed, Claude can rungh pr createfor you. Otherwise it prints the push + PR-create commands and lets you do it manually.
How it differs from the hosted flow
| Hosted UI | BYOK skill | |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic key | Ours | Yours |
| Source code visibility | Sent to Anthropic via our servers | Sent to Anthropic via your Claude Code |
| GitHub access | Required (our GitHub App) | Not required |
| Working tree | Untouched | Untouched (commits via plumbing) |
| Output | A real pull request | A local branch — push and PR yourself |
| Telemetry | We see scan + PR stats | None — we have zero visibility |
| Cost | Included | Your Anthropic usage |
The agent's behavior is identical — same handler-detection rules, same event-naming conventions, same tenant-source inference. See Behavior reference.
Updating the skill
When we ship a new version of the procedure, re-run:
es skills download setup --force
--force overwrites your existing SKILL.md. Restart Claude Code afterward — it caches skill content on startup.
To check what version you have installed vs what's published:
head -5 ~/.claude/skills/everscribe-setup/SKILL.md # local version
es skills list # published version
Read next
- Hosted UI flow — the GitHub App-driven alternative
- Behavior reference — the shared rules both paths implement
- CLI · Skills —
es skillscommand reference