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This guide takes you from nothing to a research assistant of your own. Scout searches the web and answers your questions with its sources, and by the end of this page it lives in your Orca account, ready to ask from your terminal, from your coding agent, or from your own code. Orca is where it runs. An idea becomes a working agent in minutes, and that agent becomes part of your product in hours. Tokens cost OpenRouter’s price plus their fee, with no markup from us, and the harness underneath is built to spend fewer of them. A sandbox starts only when a session needs one (Scout doesn’t), a model call that hits a hiccup is retried for you, and every session shows exactly what it cost. Each step below builds on the one before, and you can stop after any of them.
No account yet? Sign up first. New accounts start with free credit and no card, and every step on this page runs on it.

What you’ll do

  1. Install the CLI and sign in.
  2. Copy Scout with one command, or build it from a few lines of code.
  3. Use it: ask it something, then have a conversation.
  4. Let your coding agent drive.
  5. Run it from your own code.
  6. See what it cost, and clean up.
You need a terminal on macOS or Linux. Python or Node is only needed to build Scout from code (step 2) and in step 5. Scout needs no sandbox, so it uses no machine time: you pay only for its model tokens and web searches, from your credit.

Or hand this page to your coding agent

If you work in Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor, it can do the typing while you watch. Paste this prompt:
The commands below work in bash, zsh, and fish, on macOS and Linux. Where the shells differ, a block has a tab for each.

1. Install the CLI and sign in

The script installs a single orca binary to ~/.local/bin. If your shell then says orca: command not found, add that folder to your PATH as the script suggests, and open a new terminal. On Windows, download the binary from the releases page. An older CLI updates itself with orca update.
It prints a one-time code and a link to the Orca dashboard. Open the link, sign in, check that the code matches, and choose Approve. The CLI then prints “Logged in to Orca as” your role and organization. It works the same over SSH and inside a coding agent, which relays the code and the link to you. Check your credit:
balance is your Orca credit. The amount new accounts start with is on the pricing page.

2. Copy Scout

Scout is a model, its instructions, and one tool. This is all of it:
There is no loop to write, no search API to call, and no history to store: Orca runs each conversation, calls the search whenever the model asks for it, and keeps every message. The model name also says who pays: orca/openrouter/<id> runs on your Orca credit. See models and provider keys. Get Scout into your account whichever way you like:
Scout is shared as a kit, a link anyone can copy an agent from.
1

Copy it into your account

Or open Scout’s kit page and choose Copy.
2

See your agent

It shows the same definition as the code above.
Either way, Scout is now in your account. Make it yours any time: change its instructions, model, or tools on its page in the dashboard. Its code is in orca-kits on GitHub.

3. Use it

Ask Scout something it has to look up:
Scout searches the web, then streams its answer into your terminal, with a link for each source. A real run on 2026-10-14 answered:
That answer cost $0.11. Ask the same question on another day and you’ll get that day’s answer, since Scout searches every time. To have a conversation, run orca chat scout with no question. You’re now chatting with Scout, and it remembers what you said. Try a question, then a follow-up:
Ctrl-C leaves the chat. On the way out it prints session session_...: a session is one conversation, and Orca keeps it. orca chat scout --session session_... (with your session’s ID) picks it up again tomorrow. You can also chat with Scout in the dashboard. Open it on the Agents page, type your question into Give scout a task…, and choose Submit task. The Sessions page shows every conversation, including the ones from your terminal.
Scout needs no sandbox, but you can give it one. Add --sandbox, and it can also run code and save files in /workspace/outputs for you to download. Start here shows how. A sandbox uses machine time; delete the session when you’re done.

4. Let your coding agent drive

Give your coding agent Orca’s tools, and you can run Scout just by asking. orca mcp serve is an MCP server with one tool per CLI action, so your coding agent can copy kits, create agents, chat with them, and read your usage and wallet. It uses the login you already have.
Install the Orca plugin. It registers the MCP server and adds a skill that knows the CLI:
Or add only the MCP server:
Start a new session of your coding agent so it loads the server. Then ask it things like:
  • “Ask Scout to research the trade-offs between SQLite and Postgres for a small app, and summarize its answer.”
  • “Ask Scout which versions of our dependencies have security advisories this month, and list the links it found.”
  • “Continue my last session with Scout and ask it for a shorter answer.”
  • “How much Orca credit do I have left, and what did Scout cost today?”
Your coding agent acts as you with these tools: it can create, delete, and spend. See use Orca from coding agents for every tool.

5. Run it from your own code

Everything so far went through the CLI, which calls the same API your application will. Your code uses the official openai package with an Orca API key. If you built Scout from code in step 2, you already have the package: skip to the key. Install the openai package. It needs Python 3.10 or later, or Node 22.18 or later. Check your version first, and update it if it’s older:
Then make a key, in the terminal you’ll run the program from. This keeps it there as ORCA_API_KEY without printing it. A new terminal won’t have it, so run this again there.
This program finds Scout, opens a session, and streams one answer:
Scout lives on Orca, so your code only opens a session and reads the answer. Build with the API explains each call.

6. See what it cost, and clean up

Every call is recorded with what it cost, down to the session:
orca sessions get session_... shows one session’s cost, tokens, and machine time.
  • Model tokens and web searches are paid from your Orca credit, since Scout’s model starts with orca/.
  • Scout uses no machine time, unless you give it a sandbox with --sandbox. Sandboxes use machine time from your plan and need a small balance of credit, your plan’s minimum balance.
The numbers for each plan are on the pricing page. See usage and wallet for the rest. Keep Scout if you like it. To remove everything this page made instead, delete Scout’s sessions, then Scout, then the key. Deleting an agent does not delete its sessions.
Then revoke the key named scout with orca keys revoke <its id> --yes, and close the terminal: its ORCA_API_KEY still holds the revoked key.

Where to go next

Cram Coach

Another kit: a textbook chapter and your exam date in, a study plan, Anki cards, and a practice test out.

Build your own agent

Every call explained, from creating an agent to streaming its answers.

Agent recipes

Complete agents to copy: a support agent, a data analyst, a code reviewer, and more.

Share your own agent

Publish an agent as a kit, the way Scout is shared, and send the link to anyone.