First Launch
When you open BaseLayer for the first time, you’ll walk through a short setup process.
Sign in
Choose how to create your account:
- Email magic link: enter your email address, then click the link sent to your inbox
- GitHub OAuth: sign in with your GitHub account
- Google OAuth: sign in with your Google account
Import wizard
The setup wizard will ask if you’d like to import existing conversation history from:
- Claude: upload your data export ZIP
- ChatGPT: upload your data export ZIP
You can skip this step and import later from Settings → Import Data.
Even if you skip the import, BaseLayer starts capturing new conversations immediately once the Chrome extension or IDE watcher is active.
Connections
The Connections tab is your control center for live ingestion. It shows every harness BaseLayer can hook into and lets you enable or disable capture from each one individually.
Supported harnesses include:
- Claude Code
- Claude Desktop
- Cursor
- GitHub Copilot
- Aider
- Codex
- Antigravity
- Windsurf
Each harness shows its current status: whether the tool is detected, actively ingesting, or needs attention.
Windsurf and Antigravity require a restart before BaseLayer can read their conversations. If either is running in a state where BaseLayer can’t connect, you’ll be notified in two ways:
- The menu bar icon changes to indicate action is needed
- An OS-level notification prompts you to restart the tool
Once you restart the tool, BaseLayer connects automatically and begins capturing.
You’re ready
After setup, BaseLayer runs in the background. You’ll see the menu bar icon indicating it’s active.
Next steps:
