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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.poolside.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Use this page to set up Poolside Assistant and make your first change.
This quickstart covers using Poolside in your IDE with Poolside Assistant. Poolside is also available in the browser and from the CLI. See Poolside Chat and Poolside Agent CLI.

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Prerequisites

  • Access to a Poolside instance URL. If you do not have an instance URL, contact your Poolside administrator.
  • Permission to install IDE extensions in your environment.
  • A local project or repository open in your IDE.

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Get started in your IDE

1

Install the extension

You must have Visual Studio Code (VS Code) version 1.85.0 or later installed.If VS Code is not installed, install it from your organization’s internal software catalog or download the latest stable release from code.visualstudio.com.
  1. Go to the Poolside Assistant page on the Visual Studio Marketplace.
  2. Click Install to open the extension details page in VS Code.
    If a dialog box appears with the message Visual Studio Code is required to install this extension, click Continue.
  3. In VS Code, click Install.
  4. Restart VS Code to complete the installation.
2

Connect to your instance and sign in

  1. Click the Poolside Assistant icon in the VS Code Status Bar, and then select Show Poolside Assistant.
  2. In the Poolside chat panel, click the Settings icon.
  3. In the Poolside Settings tab, set Poolside: URI to your Poolside instance URL.
  4. In the Poolside chat panel, click Sign in.
  5. Follow your organization’s sign-in process.
If you don’t have an instance URL, contact your Poolside administrator.
In some corporate environments, your IDE might require an SSL certificate to connect to Poolside. If applicable, contact your IT team for the certificate and installation instructions.
3

Start your first conversation

Open the project, repository, or file you want to work with in your IDE.In the Poolside chat panel, ask a question that helps you understand the project or file. Try one of these prompts:
Summarize this project and explain how the main pieces fit together.

Explain how this file works and how it fits into the project.
For help writing effective prompts, see Prompting best practices.
Poolside Assistant reviews your project and generates a summary, using relevant files as context so you do not have to add them manually.
4

Make a change

Ask Poolside to suggest some improvements for your codebase.For example:
Review this codebase for 2–3 low-risk ways to improve maintainability or performance.  
Don't make any changes yet.  
Explain the impacts of each, then ask which one I’d like to pursue.
Poolside analyzes your codebase. It might ask for approval before reading files or running commands to better understand your project.Review the response and tell Poolside which improvement to make. For example:
Make improvement 2.
A list of tasks appears, such as analyzing files, creating or updating code, and running tests, and Poolside might ask for more approvals again as it works. For more information, see How Poolside Assistant works.
5

Review the change

When Poolside is done, click Review Changes to inspect the diff.If you want to undo the changes, click Revert in the chat panel.
6

Try more examples

To continue, see these resources:

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Next steps

Poolside Assistant (IDE)

Learn about agent workflows, commands, and context.

Prompting best practices

Get better results with practical prompting patterns.