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CKS Documentation

Quick Start

Get CKS up and running with your LLM in under 5 minutes.

Two ways in: drive it through Claude Desktop (chat, tool calls, no UI to install), or through cks-studio (a graph canvas and AI chat panel in the browser). Both talk to the same cks-mcp server, so you can use either — or both at once, pointed at the same session.

1. Install

Section titled “1. Install”

One command installs the entire backend:

Terminal window
pip install cks-mcp

This automatically brings in cks-runtime, cks-core, and all dependencies.

2. Connect to Claude Desktop

Section titled “2. Connect to Claude Desktop”

Add cks-mcp to your MCP servers.

  1. Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer → Edit Config.
  2. Add this block to claude_desktop_config.json:
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cks-mcp": {
      "command": "cks-mcp"
    }
  }
}

If cks-mcp was installed into a virtual environment rather than your global Python, use the absolute path to its executable instead (e.g. /path/to/venv/bin/cks-mcp) — Claude Desktop launches the command directly and won’t have your shell’s activated environment.

  1. Save and restart Claude Desktop (Cmd+Q, then reopen).

After restart, a connector icon will appear — cks-mcp with 63 tools is ready to use.

2b. Or: Launch cks-studio

Section titled “2b. Or: Launch cks-studio”

Prefer clicking around a graph to typing prompts? cks-studio is a single-page app that connects to cks-mcp over HTTP and gives you a graph canvas, a session gallery, agent-pipeline monitoring, and its own AI chat panel that can call the same tools:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/Deus-corp/cks-studio.git
cd cks-studio
npm install
cp .env.example .env.local   # point it at your cks-mcp server
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173. See the cks-studio repository for the full setup, including the one-command ecosystem demo graph and free-tier AI chat via OpenRouter.

3. Your First Experiment

Section titled “3. Your First Experiment”

Ask Claude (or type into cks-studio’s chat panel):

Create a knowledge structure about “Quantum Mechanics” with two concepts (Wave-Particle Duality and Superposition). Link them with a relation. Then validate the structure.

Claude will call validate_knowledge and report back whether the structure is valid. If you’re in cks-studio, watch the graph canvas update live as each tool call lands.

What’s Next

Section titled “What’s Next”

Need Help?

Section titled “Need Help?”