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title: Quick Start description: Get RTK running in 5 minutes and see your first token savings sidebar: order: 2

Quick Start

This guide walks you through your first RTK commands after installation.

Prerequisites

RTK is installed and verified:

rtk --version   # rtk x.y.z
rtk gain        # shows token savings dashboard

If not, see Installation.

Step 1: Initialize for your AI assistant

# For Claude Code (global — applies to all projects)
rtk init --global

# For a single project only
cd /your/project && rtk init

This installs the hook that automatically rewrites commands. Restart your AI assistant after this step.

Preview without writing: --dry-run

To see exactly what init would change before it touches anything, add --dry-run:

rtk init --global --dry-run

Every would-be file create/update/patch is printed with a [dry-run] would ... prefix, then a [dry-run] Nothing written. footer. Nothing on disk is modified, no settings.json is patched, and the telemetry consent prompt is skipped. Combine with -v to also print the full content RTK would write:

rtk init --global --dry-run -v

--dry-run works for every init flavour (--agent cursor, --gemini, --codex, --copilot, --uninstall, ...). It cannot be combined with --show.

Step 2: Use your tools normally

Once the hook is installed, nothing changes in how you work. Your AI assistant runs commands as usual — the hook intercepts them transparently and rewrites them before execution.

For example, when Claude Code runs cargo test, the hook rewrites it to rtk cargo test before it executes. The LLM receives filtered output with only the failures — not 500 lines of passing tests. You never see or type rtk.

RTK covers all major ecosystems — Git, Cargo/Rust, JavaScript, Python, Go, Ruby, .NET, Docker/Kubernetes, and more. See What RTK Optimizes for the full list.

Step 3: Check your savings

After a few commands, see how much was saved:

rtk gain

Total commands : 12
Input tokens   : 45,230
Output tokens  : 4,890
Saved          : 40,340  (89.2%)

Step 4: Unsupported commands

Commands RTK doesn't recognize run through passthrough — output is unchanged, usage is tracked:

rtk proxy make install

Next steps

• What RTK Optimizes — all supported commands and savings by ecosystem
• Supported agents — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and more
• Configuration — customize RTK behavior