honcho-setup

honcho-setup is a skill for Claude Code from plastic-labs/cursor-honcho. It costs 20 tokens per session (456 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A first-time setup guide for Honcho, a service that provides persistent memory for coding sessions. It checks for an API key, validates the connection, and creates the configuration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to add the Honcho API key as an environment variable, test that the key works, and complete the initial configuration.
Why use it?
It provides a clear path from an unconfigured installation to a working Honcho connection. It also keeps the API key out of chat messages.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter.

Part of the honcho plugin — 4 skills, 2 commands, 1 agent shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/plastic-labs/cursor-honcho/honcho-setup
Any agent
npx skills add plastic-labs/cursor-honcho --skill honcho-setup
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/plastic-labs/cursor-honcho

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install honcho, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 skills, 2 commands, 1 agent.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for honcho-setup

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/plastic-labs/cursor-honcho/honcho-setup.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/plastic-labs/cursor-honcho/honcho-setup)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/plastic-labs/cursor-honcho/honcho-setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/plastic-labs/cursor-honcho/honcho-setup.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 456 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00020 $0.00456
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00228
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00091
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00046

Measured 6d ago against content hash a81645b23c57, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

honcho-setup scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/honcho/skills/honcho-setup/SKILL.md · 58 lines

What it actually says

Honcho Setup

Walk the user through first-time Honcho configuration so persistent memory works in Cursor.

Steps

1. Check current state

Run this command to check if HONCHO_API_KEY is already set:

echo "${HONCHO_API_KEY:+set}"

If the output is set, skip to step 3 (validation). Otherwise continue.

2. Direct user to get an API key

Tell the user:

You need a Honcho API key. Get one for free at https://app.honcho.dev

Once you have it, add this line to your shell config (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):

export HONCHO_API_KEY="your-key-here"

Then restart Cursor so it picks up the new environment variable.

Wait for the user to confirm they have set the key. If they paste the key directly in chat, warn them not to share API keys in conversation and remind them to set it as an environment variable instead.

3. Validate the API key

Test the connection by running the setup runner. Find the plugin directory first:

HONCHO_PLUGIN="${HONCHO_PLUGIN_DIR:-$HOME/.honcho/plugins/cursor-honcho/plugins/honcho}"
bun run "$HONCHO_PLUGIN/src/skills/setup-runner.ts"

If it succeeds, the key is valid and the config file has been created.

If it fails, help the user troubleshoot:

  • Key not set: re-check shell config and restart Cursor
  • Authentication error: key may be invalid, get a new one from https://app.honcho.dev
  • Network error: check internet connection
  • Plugin not found: check that cursor-honcho is installed at ~/.honcho/plugins/cursor-honcho

4. Confirm setup

Tell the user that Honcho is configured and memory will be active on their next session. Suggest they restart Cursor or open a new chat to see the memory context load.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 58 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A a81645b23c57

Subscribe to this mod's changes

honcho-setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository plastic-labs/cursor-honcho (6 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 456 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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