Getting Started

Give an AI agent a real, owned identity — an email inbox, and optionally a phone number — and send its first message, all from the terminal. Anima is hosted; there is nothing to run locally and no infrastructure to stand up. This page takes you from zero to a working agent that can send email.

Install the CLI

The anima CLI is the fastest way to provision and drive an agent.

npm (recommended)
Signed Linux binary (containers / CI)

npm install -g @anima-labs/cli

Bun and pnpm work too: bun add -g @anima-labs/cli or pnpm add -g @anima-labs/cli. Use this on your development machine, and as a dependency of any Node/TypeScript agent project.

For containers, servers, and CI runners, download the signed static binary from GitHub Releases (anima-linux-x64 / anima-linux-arm64). Every release is signed with Sigstore keyless signing; verify it before installing:

VERSION="v0.6.5"
ARCH="$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/x64/; s/aarch64/arm64/')"
BIN="anima-linux-${ARCH}"
BASE="https://github.com/anima-labs-ai/cli/releases/download/${VERSION}"

curl -fsSL -O "${BASE}/${BIN}"
curl -fsSL -O "${BASE}/${BIN}.sigstore.bundle"

cosign verify-blob \
  --bundle "${BIN}.sigstore.bundle" \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github.com/anima-labs-ai/cli/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v.+' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  "${BIN}"

install -m 0755 "${BIN}" /usr/local/bin/anima

macOS and Windows binaries are not shipped — on those platforms use the npm package. See Install the Anima CLI for the full verification chain, the curl | sh installer, and Dockerfile examples.

Confirm it’s on your PATH:

anima --version

The primary binary is anima; am is a shorter alias for the same tool.

Onboard

Run the guided onboarding:

anima onboard

If you’re not signed in yet, anima onboard starts setup for you. Choosing Create a fresh agent identity provisions an organization, an agent, and an email inbox in a single flow, and saves your credentials locally. You’ll be asked for two things:

The agent owner’s email — the human who owns this agent. A 6-digit verification code is sent here.
A username for the agent — this becomes the agent’s address, <username>@agents.useanima.sh.

Onboarding then shows your identity and plan tier, offers a couple of optional test-mode demos (no real email is sent), and offers to wire Anima into your AI client over MCP. When it finishes you have a working agent identity with an inbox, its credentials stored in ~/.anima, and the commands to do everything else.

Already have an Anima organization and API key? Choose Configure with an existing API key instead, or run anima init --non-interactive --api-key ak_....

Verify to unlock sending

A brand-new agent starts unverified, and an unverified agent may only email its own owner. To unlock sending to anyone, get the 6-digit code from the owner’s inbox and submit it:

anima verify <code>

On success, the agent is verified and can send to any recipient. You can confirm your identity and tier at any time:

anima auth whoami

Send the first email

Send an email from your agent. Until the agent is verified, send it to the owner’s address — that always works and proves the inbox is live end to end. You’ll need the agent’s ID, which onboarding printed and stored; anima auth whoami shows your identity.

anima email send \
  --agent <agent-id> \
  --to you@example.com \
  --subject "Hello from my Anima agent" \
  --body "This email was sent by an AI agent."

The command prints the sent message’s ID. To watch messages arrive and other events in real time, open the live event stream:

anima tail

Provision a phone number (optional)

On a Starter tier or above, give the same agent a phone number for SMS and voice:

anima phone provision --agent <agent-id> --country US --capabilities sms,voice

Then text a number you control:

anima phone send-sms --agent <agent-id> --to +15551234567 --body "Texting from my Anima agent."

See Phone & Voice for the full SMS-then-call walkthrough.

Use it from code

The same platform is available from the official SDKs. Once onboarding has provisioned an agent, use its ID to send from your application. Set ANIMA_API_KEY in your environment (the CLI stored your key under ~/.anima), or pass the key to the client directly.

Node.js
Python
Go

npm install @anima-labs/sdk

import { Anima } from "@anima-labs/sdk";

const anima = new Anima({ apiKey: process.env.ANIMA_API_KEY });

const message = await anima.messages.sendEmail({
  agentId: "agent_...",
  to: ["you@example.com"],
  subject: "Hello from my Anima agent",
  body: "This email was sent by an AI agent.",
});

console.log(message.id, message.status);

pip install anima-labs

import os
from anima import Anima

anima = Anima(api_key=os.environ["ANIMA_API_KEY"])

message = anima.messages.send_email(
    agent_id="agent_...",
    to=["you@example.com"],
    subject="Hello from my Anima agent",
    body="This email was sent by an AI agent.",
)

print(message.id, message.status)

go get github.com/anima-labs-ai/go

package main

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"

	anima "github.com/anima-labs-ai/go"
)

func main() {
	client := anima.NewClient(os.Getenv("ANIMA_API_KEY"))

	msg, err := client.Messages.SendEmail(context.Background(), anima.SendEmailParams{
		AgentID: "agent_...",
		To:      []string{"you@example.com"},
		Subject: "Hello from my Anima agent",
		Body:    "This email was sent by an AI agent.",
	})
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(msg.ID, msg.Status)
}

The REST API lives at https://api.useanima.sh/v1 and accepts your key as either a Bearer token or an X-API-Key header.

Next steps

For AI Agents

Let your agent set itself up from skill.md, and connect the docs and product MCP servers.

Connect your AI client

Wire Anima’s tools into Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and Windsurf.

Quickstart: Vault

Store credentials your agent can use without exposing raw secrets to the model.

SDKs

Typed clients for Node.js, Python, and Go.

​Getting Started

​Use it from code

​Next steps

For AI Agents

Connect your AI client

Quickstart: Vault

SDKs

Getting Started

Use it from code

Next steps