Install Talon
Install the client wheel via pipx — recommended for CLI tools because it isolates dependencies in its own venv. Requires Python 3.11+. Installs the talon CLI plus the indexer and MCP setup.
No pipx? pip install cogmeta-talon works the same way; pipx just keeps the install isolated.
Authenticate
Create your Cogmeta account and link your local installation. The CLI opens a browser for the OAuth handshake. Source code never crosses the wire — the OAuth scope grants workspace metadata access only, and never your Anthropic API key.
Initialise your project
Navigate to your project root and run talon init to configure the MCP server for Claude Code, then talon index to parse your repository and build the structural graph.
Timings vary by repo size. A medium repo (~2k files, ~5k commits) typically completes in under 30 seconds.
Optional sanity check · run talon status to confirm the index, the workspace, and the MCP reachability before opening Claude Code:
Know your band before you pay
Optional, and free. Run talon estimate — a read-only scan (no LLM calls, ~30s) that characterises how hard your code is to search and returns the saving band it correlates with, before you spend a cent:
Small, easily-grepped repos come back low — sometimes below the floor where Talon costs more. We publish that too, in /research.
Start coding
Open Claude Code and work normally. Talon operates transparently — before the agent's first turn, it serves the right structural context, and steers the session clear of redundant re-reads in real time.
Sample shape only — the corpus-aggregate cost reduction lives at /research; your numbers will depend on session shape.