Open the address of your AI Council installation and enter your Email and Password. Accounts are created by an administrator in the account menu → Users & Access. There is no self sign-up. After signing in you land on the Dashboard with the list of projects.
Account menu → Git Forges. GitLab needs an OAuth application, GitHub needs an installed GitHub App. Details: Connecting GitLab and GitHub. If your code lives in a directory on the server, you can skip this step.
On the home screen, click From Forge and pick a repository, or click New Project to use a directory on the server. You can also create a project with no code: knowledge, conventions and chat work right away. Details: Projects.
Open the project, click Analyze, choose the Full preset and click Start Analysis. Until the first analysis, the project screens are empty and there is nothing to deliver to the agent. Details: Project analysis.
Account menu → Profile & API Keys → + Create Key. Copy the command from the Install hooks on your machine block (the address and key are already filled in) and run it on your machine:
AI_COUNCIL_API_TOKEN=aic_xxx AI_COUNCIL_URL=https://<address> \
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://<address>/install-hooks.sh)"Details: Connecting a workstation.
Open Claude Code in the project directory and start a new session. Ask the agent to open any project file. The terminal shows the line AI Council: sent the project rulebook in full to the agent. The session and everything delivered to it are visible on the MCP Live screen.