Welcome to Software of You
This guide walks you through everything — from installing the software to having your first real conversation with it. You don't need to be technical. If you can type a sentence, you can use this.
Before we start: you interact with SoY by talking. No menus, no fields, no workflow to learn. If you can type a sentence, you can use this.
Before you start
Software of You runs inside Claude Code — Anthropic's AI tool for your computer. You'll need both of these before anything else.
The setup
Follow these in order. Each one takes a minute or two.
Open the Claude Code application on your computer. You'll see a chat interface — like a conversation window. This is where everything happens. You'll type in plain English and Claude will respond.
Copy the line below and paste it into the Claude Code chat window, then press Enter. This installs Software of You on your machine. It takes about 30 seconds.
You'll see a few lines of output confirming the install. When it's done, it'll say something like ✓ Software of You installed.
Open a terminal window and run these two commands — first to navigate into the SoY folder, then to launch it:
Run the cd first, then the claude command. Claude needs to be launched from inside the SoY folder so it can find the plugin.
claude without the flag.
Claude Code will open in your terminal. Start a new conversation — type this to kick things off:
SoY will run a quick setup check, confirm everything is installed, and walk you through next steps based on what you already have. If you're a new user, it'll say hello and ask who you want to start tracking.
cd ~/.software-of-you command first, then launched Claude from that folder. If it still doesn't respond as SoY, type /help-soy — if you see a command list, you're in.
SoY needs data to work with. The easiest way to start is to tell Claude about someone you work with. Just type naturally — like you'd tell a colleague. For example:
Claude will confirm it's been saved and ask if you want to log any interaction history. You don't have to — but the more context you give it now, the more useful it gets immediately.
Connecting Gmail and Google Calendar is what makes SoY dramatically more useful. Once connected, Claude has access to your email threads and upcoming meetings — so instead of you pasting context in, it's already there.
Claude will walk you through the OAuth flow — you'll see a browser window asking you to log in with Google and grant read access to Gmail and Calendar. This is the same type of permission any email app uses.
Now that you're set up
SoY doesn't invent context — it works from yours. The richer the data you feed it, the more useful every answer becomes.
Five ways to seed it fast:
Connect my Google account and follow the browser prompt. Once connected, ask: "What's on my calendar this week and who should I prep for?"/build-all to generate your full dashboard — every contact page, your email hub, network map, timeline, and more. This takes 2–5 minutes the first time. Worth the wait.The full system
You don't need to use all of these on day one. But they're here when you need them — each one activated just by talking to Claude.
Common questions