Quick Start with Claude Code

The fastest way to build DocETL pipelines is with Claude Code, Anthropic's agentic coding tool. DocETL includes a built-in Claude Code skill that helps you create, run, and debug pipelines interactively.

Option 1: Clone the Repository (Recommended)

This gives you the full development environment with the skill already configured.

Follow the Installation from Source instructions
Run claude in the repository directory

The skill is located at .claude/skills/docetl/SKILL.md.

Option 2: Install via pip

If you already have DocETL installed via pip, you can install the skill separately:

pip install docetl
docetl install-skill

This copies the skill to ~/.claude/skills/docetl/. Then run claude in any directory.

To uninstall: docetl install-skill --uninstall

Usage

Simply describe what you want to do with your data. The skill activates automatically when you mention "docetl" or describe unstructured data processing tasks:

> I have a folder of customer support tickets in JSON format.
> I want to extract the main issue, sentiment, and suggested resolution for each.

Claude will:

Read your data to understand its structure
Write a tailored pipeline with prompts specific to your documents
Run the pipeline and show you the results
Debug issues if any operations fail

Alternative: Manual Pipeline Authoring

If you prefer not to use Claude Code, see the Quick Start Tutorial for writing pipelines by hand.