assay init¶

Initialize an Assay project.

Synopsis¶

assay init [OPTIONS]

Description¶

Scans your directory for known project types (MCP, Python, Node.js) and generates a security policy and config. Optionally generates CI scaffolding and .gitignore.

With --from-trace, generates a policy directly from recorded agent behavior instead of using a starter preset.

Options¶

Option	Description
`--config <FILE>`	Config filename. Default: `eval.yaml`.
`--ci [PROVIDER]`	Generate CI scaffolding. `github` (default) or `gitlab`.
`--gitignore`	Generate `.gitignore` for artifacts/db.
`--preset <PRESET>`	Starter preset: `default`, `hardened`, `dev`. Default: `default`.
`--list-presets`	List available presets and exit.
`--from-trace <FILE>`	Generate policy from an existing trace file (JSONL).
`--heuristics`	Enable entropy/risk analysis when generating from trace. Requires `--from-trace`.
`--hello-trace`	Generate a runnable hello trace and smoke suite scaffold.

Examples¶

Basic setup¶

assay init

Creates eval.yaml with a canonical v1 scaffold (configVersion: 1) and a starter smoke test template you can replace with real prompts/expectations.

Fast first signal (hello trace)¶

Creates eval.yaml, traces/hello.jsonl, and policy.yaml (if missing). When --config points to another directory, the hello trace is written relative to that config path.

assay init --hello-trace
assay validate --config eval.yaml --trace-file traces/hello.jsonl

# Config in a nested directory:
assay init --hello-trace --config nested/eval.yaml
assay validate --config nested/eval.yaml --trace-file nested/traces/hello.jsonl

From existing trace¶

assay init --from-trace traces/agent.jsonl --heuristics

With GitHub Actions CI¶

assay init --ci

With GitLab CI¶

assay init --ci gitlab

Hardened policy¶

assay init --preset hardened --ci --gitignore

# Backward-compatible alias (deprecated)
assay init --pack hardened --ci --gitignore