Symbiont — Developer Guide

01

Install

Three ways to get Symbiont on your machine. The install script auto-detects your platform and drops the binary into ~/.symbiont/bin.

terminal

recommended

# Install script — auto-detects OS & arch
$ curl -fsSL https://symbiont.dev/install.sh | bash

  Detected: linux-x86_64
  Downloading symbiont v1.9.1...
  ✓ Installed to ~/.symbiont/bin/symbi
  ✓ Added to PATH

terminal

# From crates.io
$ cargo install symbiont-cli

terminal

# Docker image
$ docker pull ghcr.io/thirdkeyai/symbi:latest

02

Initialize

Interactive project setup. Generates Cedar policies, agent definitions, and sandbox configuration in one pass.

terminal

$ symbi init my-project
? Select a profile: minimal
? Enable SchemaPin verification? yes
? Sandbox tier: docker

  ✓ Created my-project/symbiont.toml
  ✓ Created my-project/policies/default.cedar
  ✓ Created my-project/agents/assistant.dsl
  ✓ Created my-project/.env.example

  cd my-project && symbi run assistant

03

Write Agents

Declarative DSL for agent definitions. Supports both // and # comment styles. Model, tools, policies, and behavior in a single file.

assistant.dsl

// Agent definition — declarative DSL
# Both comment styles are supported

agent assistant {
    model       "gpt-4o"
    temperature 0.3
    max_turns   10

    system "You are a helpful assistant."

    tools [web_search, file_read]

    policy "policies/default.cedar"
    sandbox docker
}

04

Run

Test agents locally with a single command. Full reasoning loop, policy enforcement, and token tracking out of the box.

terminal

$ symbi run assistant -i 'hello'

  ▸ Loading agent: assistant
  ▸ Policy check: ✓ default.cedar
  ▸ Sandbox: docker

  Hello! I'm your assistant. How can I help you today?

  ──────────────────────────────────
  iterations: 1 │ tokens: 142 │ tools: 0

05

Deploy

Start the full runtime with API server, auto-routing, and all configured agents. Production-ready from a single command.

terminal

$ symbi up

  ╭──────────────────────────────────────╮
  │  Symbiont Runtime                    │
  ╰──────────────────────────────────────╯

  ✓ Auth: bearer token (JWT + Cedar)
  ✓ Loaded 3 agents: assistant, researcher, coder
  ✓ Auto-routing: enabled
  ✓ SchemaPin: verified
  ✓ Sandbox tier: docker

  Listening on http://0.0.0.0:3000
  Docs at      http://0.0.0.0:3000/docs

06

Feature Flags

Toggle capabilities at compile time or in symbiont.toml.

Flag	Description	Default
cedar	Cedar policy engine	on
schemapin	SchemaPin tool verification	on
sandbox	Docker/gVisor/Firecracker sandboxing	on
audit	Cryptographic audit trail	on
composio	Composio MCP integration	off
clawhavoc	Adversarial prompt testing	off
scheduling	Cron-based agent scheduling	off

07

SDKs

First-class client libraries for JavaScript and Python. Full typed API, streaming support, and built-in auth.

GitHub: symbiont-sdk-js GitHub: symbiont-sdk-python

javascript

$ npm i symbiont-sdk-js

import { Symbiont } from 'symbiont-sdk-js'

const client = new Symbiont({
  baseUrl: 'http://localhost:3000',
  token:   process.env.SYMBIONT_TOKEN
})

python

$ pip install symbiont-sdk

from symbiont import Symbiont

client = Symbiont(
    base_url="http://localhost:3000",
    token=os.environ["SYMBIONT_TOKEN"]
)

08

Govern Your Coding Assistant

First-party plugins bring Symbiont governance directly into your coding workflow. Three tiers of protection — from advisory logging to hard Cedar policy enforcement.