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Quick start guide for Defender.

Installation

curl -fsSL https://getdefender.com/install | bash

Or via npm:

npm install -g defender

Quick Start

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...\ndefender

Defender is on by default. No extra configuration needed.

Choose a provider

Defender supports 165+ providers. Set your preferred provider:

export DEFENDER_PROVIDER=anthropic\nexport ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

List all supported providers:

defender providers

Slash Commands

/privacy on|offToggle Defender tokenization
/model <id>Switch AI model
/provider <id>Switch AI provider
/statsShow token usage
/vaultShow vault statistics
/clearClear conversation history
/exitQuit

File Mentions

Attach files to your prompt with @path/to/file:

defender> Look at @src/auth.js and fix the null check on line 42

Configuration

Config is resolved in order: CLI flags → environment variables → project config → global config.

// ~/.config/defender/config.json
{
  "provider": "anthropic",
  "model": "claude-sonnet-4-20250514"
}

Project-level config (place in your repo):

// ./defender.jsonc
{
  "provider": "openai",
  "model": "gpt-4o"
}