| layout | title | nav_order | parent |
|---|---|---|---|
default |
Chapter 1: Getting Started |
1 |
Roo Code Tutorial |
Welcome to Chapter 1: Getting Started. In this part of Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor, you will build an intuitive mental model first, then move into concrete implementation details and practical production tradeoffs.
This chapter establishes a stable Roo Code baseline in a VS Code-compatible workflow.
By the end, you will have:
- Roo Code installed and running
- one provider configured successfully
- a deterministic first task completed
- a minimum approval policy for safe usage
| Requirement | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| VS Code-compatible editor | Roo Code extension runtime |
| API credentials for at least one provider | model-backed execution |
| sandbox repository | low-risk calibration environment |
| canonical lint/test command | repeatable validation signal |
Install Roo Code from the VS Code marketplace and reload the editor.
Roo Code repository docs include VSIX build/install flows.
Typical dev workflow commands:
git clone https://github.com/RooCodeInc/Roo-Code.git
cd Roo-Code
pnpm install
pnpm install:vsixAlternative manual VSIX flow:
pnpm vsix
code --install-extension bin/roo-cline-<version>.vsixStart with one known-good provider/model pair. Add more only after first task reliability is proven.
Initial policy:
- approvals enabled for file edits and commands
- no broad automation modes during first-day onboarding
- explicit task summaries required
Analyze src/services/session.ts,
refactor one function for readability without changing behavior,
run the target test command,
and summarize changed files and validation output.
Success criteria:
- proposed patch is reviewable
- expected file scope is respected
- command output is captured
- summary maps changes to results
Set and document:
- default mode for routine coding tasks
- approval threshold for mutating commands
- required validation command for each task class
- rollback expectation for risky changes
| Area | Check | Pass Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Install | extension loads correctly | Roo interface opens without errors |
| Provider | model call succeeds | initial task response is actionable |
| Edit flow | diffs are visible before apply | review step works consistently |
| Command flow | test/lint command executes | output attached to task result |
| Summary | results are clear and complete | reviewer can understand outcome quickly |
- confirm selected provider and key are aligned
- reduce to one provider first
- tighten task scope to one file/module
- include explicit non-goals
- require final summary format
- specify exact command in prompt
- avoid ambiguous phrasing like "run checks"
You now have Roo Code running with:
- installation complete
- provider baseline validated
- deterministic first task executed
- initial safety policy in place
Next: Chapter 2: Modes and Task Design
This chapter is expanded to v1-style depth for production-grade learning and implementation quality.
- tutorial: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- tutorial slug: roo-code-tutorial
- chapter focus: Chapter 1: Getting Started
- system context: Roo Code Tutorial
- objective: move from surface-level usage to repeatable engineering operation
- Define the runtime boundary for
Chapter 1: Getting Started. - Separate control-plane decisions from data-plane execution.
- Capture input contracts, transformation points, and output contracts.
- Trace state transitions across request lifecycle stages.
- Identify extension hooks and policy interception points.
- Map ownership boundaries for team and automation workflows.
- Specify rollback and recovery paths for unsafe changes.
- Track observability signals for correctness, latency, and cost.
| Decision Area | Low-Risk Path | High-Control Path | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime mode | managed defaults | explicit policy config | speed vs control |
| State handling | local ephemeral | durable persisted state | simplicity vs auditability |
| Tool integration | direct API use | mediated adapter layer | velocity vs governance |
| Rollout method | manual change | staged + canary rollout | effort vs safety |
| Incident response | best effort logs | runbooks + SLO alerts | cost vs reliability |
| Failure Mode | Early Signal | Root Cause Pattern | Countermeasure |
|---|---|---|---|
| stale context | inconsistent outputs | missing refresh window | enforce context TTL and refresh hooks |
| policy drift | unexpected execution | ad hoc overrides | centralize policy profiles |
| auth mismatch | 401/403 bursts | credential sprawl | rotation schedule + scope minimization |
| schema breakage | parser/validation errors | unmanaged upstream changes | contract tests per release |
| retry storms | queue congestion | no backoff controls | jittered backoff + circuit breakers |
| silent regressions | quality drop without alerts | weak baseline metrics | eval harness with thresholds |
- Establish a reproducible baseline environment.
- Capture chapter-specific success criteria before changes.
- Implement minimal viable path with explicit interfaces.
- Add observability before expanding feature scope.
- Run deterministic tests for happy-path behavior.
- Inject failure scenarios for negative-path validation.
- Compare output quality against baseline snapshots.
- Promote through staged environments with rollback gates.
- Record operational lessons in release notes.
- chapter-level assumptions are explicit and testable
- API/tool boundaries are documented with input/output examples
- failure handling includes retry, timeout, and fallback policy
- security controls include auth scopes and secret rotation plans
- observability includes logs, metrics, traces, and alert thresholds
- deployment guidance includes canary and rollback paths
- docs include links to upstream sources and related tracks
- post-release verification confirms expected behavior under load
- Cline Tutorial
- Continue Tutorial
- OpenHands Tutorial
- MCP Servers Tutorial
- Dyad Tutorial
- Chapter 1: Getting Started
- Build a minimal end-to-end implementation for
Chapter 1: Getting Started. - Add instrumentation and measure baseline latency and error rate.
- Introduce one controlled failure and confirm graceful recovery.
- Add policy constraints and verify they are enforced consistently.
- Run a staged rollout and document rollback decision criteria.
- Which execution boundary matters most for this chapter and why?
- What signal detects regressions earliest in your environment?
- What tradeoff did you make between delivery speed and governance?
- How would you recover from the highest-impact failure mode?
- What must be automated before scaling to team-wide adoption?
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: incoming request volume spikes after release
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: introduce adaptive concurrency limits and queue bounds
- verification target: latency p95 and p99 stay within defined SLO windows
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: tool dependency latency increases under concurrency
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: enable staged retries with jitter and circuit breaker fallback
- verification target: error budget burn rate remains below escalation threshold
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: schema updates introduce incompatible payloads
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: pin schema versions and add compatibility shims
- verification target: throughput remains stable under target concurrency
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: environment parity drifts between staging and production
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: restore environment parity via immutable config promotion
- verification target: retry volume stays bounded without feedback loops
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: access policy changes reduce successful execution rates
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: re-scope credentials and rotate leaked or stale keys
- verification target: data integrity checks pass across write/read cycles
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: background jobs accumulate and exceed processing windows
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: activate degradation mode to preserve core user paths
- verification target: audit logs capture all control-plane mutations
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: incoming request volume spikes after release
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: introduce adaptive concurrency limits and queue bounds
- verification target: latency p95 and p99 stay within defined SLO windows
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: tool dependency latency increases under concurrency
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: enable staged retries with jitter and circuit breaker fallback
- verification target: error budget burn rate remains below escalation threshold
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: schema updates introduce incompatible payloads
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: pin schema versions and add compatibility shims
- verification target: throughput remains stable under target concurrency
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: environment parity drifts between staging and production
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: restore environment parity via immutable config promotion
- verification target: retry volume stays bounded without feedback loops
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: access policy changes reduce successful execution rates
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: re-scope credentials and rotate leaked or stale keys
- verification target: data integrity checks pass across write/read cycles
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: background jobs accumulate and exceed processing windows
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: activate degradation mode to preserve core user paths
- verification target: audit logs capture all control-plane mutations
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: incoming request volume spikes after release
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: introduce adaptive concurrency limits and queue bounds
- verification target: latency p95 and p99 stay within defined SLO windows
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: tool dependency latency increases under concurrency
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: enable staged retries with jitter and circuit breaker fallback
- verification target: error budget burn rate remains below escalation threshold
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: schema updates introduce incompatible payloads
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: pin schema versions and add compatibility shims
- verification target: throughput remains stable under target concurrency
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: environment parity drifts between staging and production
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: restore environment parity via immutable config promotion
- verification target: retry volume stays bounded without feedback loops
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: access policy changes reduce successful execution rates
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: re-scope credentials and rotate leaked or stale keys
- verification target: data integrity checks pass across write/read cycles
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: background jobs accumulate and exceed processing windows
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: activate degradation mode to preserve core user paths
- verification target: audit logs capture all control-plane mutations
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: incoming request volume spikes after release
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: introduce adaptive concurrency limits and queue bounds
- verification target: latency p95 and p99 stay within defined SLO windows
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: tool dependency latency increases under concurrency
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: enable staged retries with jitter and circuit breaker fallback
- verification target: error budget burn rate remains below escalation threshold
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: schema updates introduce incompatible payloads
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: pin schema versions and add compatibility shims
- verification target: throughput remains stable under target concurrency
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: environment parity drifts between staging and production
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: restore environment parity via immutable config promotion
- verification target: retry volume stays bounded without feedback loops
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: access policy changes reduce successful execution rates
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: re-scope credentials and rotate leaked or stale keys
- verification target: data integrity checks pass across write/read cycles
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: background jobs accumulate and exceed processing windows
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: activate degradation mode to preserve core user paths
- verification target: audit logs capture all control-plane mutations
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: incoming request volume spikes after release
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: introduce adaptive concurrency limits and queue bounds
- verification target: latency p95 and p99 stay within defined SLO windows
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: tool dependency latency increases under concurrency
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: enable staged retries with jitter and circuit breaker fallback
- verification target: error budget burn rate remains below escalation threshold
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: schema updates introduce incompatible payloads
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: pin schema versions and add compatibility shims
- verification target: throughput remains stable under target concurrency
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: environment parity drifts between staging and production
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: restore environment parity via immutable config promotion
- verification target: retry volume stays bounded without feedback loops
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: access policy changes reduce successful execution rates
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: re-scope credentials and rotate leaked or stale keys
- verification target: data integrity checks pass across write/read cycles
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
- tutorial context: Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor
- trigger condition: background jobs accumulate and exceed processing windows
- initial hypothesis: identify the smallest reproducible failure boundary
- immediate action: protect user-facing stability before optimization work
- engineering control: activate degradation mode to preserve core user paths
- verification target: audit logs capture all control-plane mutations
- rollback trigger: pre-defined quality gate fails for two consecutive checks
- communication step: publish incident status with owner and ETA
- learning capture: add postmortem and convert findings into automated tests
Most teams struggle here because the hard part is not writing more code, but deciding clear boundaries for pnpm, install, vsix so behavior stays predictable as complexity grows.
In practical terms, this chapter helps you avoid three common failures:
- coupling core logic too tightly to one implementation path
- missing the handoff boundaries between setup, execution, and validation
- shipping changes without clear rollback or observability strategy
After working through this chapter, you should be able to reason about Chapter 1: Getting Started as an operating subsystem inside Roo Code Tutorial: Run an AI Dev Team in Your Editor, with explicit contracts for inputs, state transitions, and outputs.
Use the implementation notes around Code, clone, https as your checklist when adapting these patterns to your own repository.
Under the hood, Chapter 1: Getting Started usually follows a repeatable control path:
- Context bootstrap: initialize runtime config and prerequisites for
pnpm. - Input normalization: shape incoming data so
installreceives stable contracts. - Core execution: run the main logic branch and propagate intermediate state through
vsix. - Policy and safety checks: enforce limits, auth scopes, and failure boundaries.
- Output composition: return canonical result payloads for downstream consumers.
- Operational telemetry: emit logs/metrics needed for debugging and performance tuning.
When debugging, walk this sequence in order and confirm each stage has explicit success/failure conditions.
Use the following upstream sources to verify implementation details while reading this chapter:
- Roo Code README
Why it matters: authoritative reference on
Roo Code README(github.com). - Roo Code Docs
Why it matters: authoritative reference on
Roo Code Docs(docs.roocode.com). - Using Modes docs page
Why it matters: authoritative reference on
Using Modes docs page(docs.roocode.com). - Roo Code Releases
Why it matters: authoritative reference on
Roo Code Releases(github.com).
Suggested trace strategy:
- search upstream code for
pnpmandinstallto map concrete implementation paths - compare docs claims against actual runtime/config code before reusing patterns in production