kolm / learn / first .kolm in 5 minutes
First .kolm in 5 minutes.
By the end of this page you will have one signed .kolm file on your laptop. It redacts PII from any text you throw at it. It runs offline. No data leaves your machine.
Golden Path 1 of 3 . v1.0 . tested on macOS, Linux, Windows (PowerShell + cmd)
my-redactor.kolm file (about 30 KB), K-score ≥ 0.85, HMAC-signed, content-addressable, and a verbatim copy of the spec + seeds + recipes that built it. It will redact patient names, SSNs, emails, phone numbers, and credit-card numbers from any text input you pipe in. The artifact is yours forever; uninstalling kolm does not stop it from running.
Before you start
You need Node.js 20 or newer and a terminal. That is the whole list. The CLI is one self-contained JavaScript binary; no Docker, no Python, no GPU. kolm compile in cloud mode pings kolm.ai for the build step, but every command on this page works offline once the artifact is on disk.
node --version # should print v20.x or higher
Install the CLI.
30 secondskolm ships from GitHub. One npm command, then it is on your PATH as kolm.
npm i -g github:sneaky-hippo/kolmogorov-stack
kolm --version
kolm v0.2.6
kolm --version prints a version, you are done with step 1. If it errors, npm config get prefix should be on your PATH.Build your first artifact.
90 secondskolm build is the one-shot wrapper. It scaffolds a spec, generates a small seed set, compiles the artifact, verifies the signature chain, and prints the K-score. --from redactor picks the PII redactor template; --yes accepts every default.
kolm build my-redactor --from redactor --yes
scaffolding spec my-redactor.spec.json (template: redactor) . ok
generating seeds my-redactor.seeds.jsonl (10 rows) . ok
compiling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
K-score for my-redactor.kolm: 0.874 (gate >= 0.85 - pass)
verifying signature . ok
artifact written: my-redactor.kolm (28.4 KB)
try it:
kolm run my-redactor.kolm --input <sample.json>
echo {"text":"..."} | kolm run my-redactor.kolm
Inspect what you got.
30 secondskolm inspect prints the manifest in plain text. This is what a security reviewer sees when they audit the artifact.
kolm inspect my-redactor.kolm
artifact: my-redactor.kolm task: redact identifier patterns from free text built: 2026-05-16 14:22:08Z (12s ago) size: 28.4 KB on disk K-score for my-redactor.kolm: 0.874 (gate >= 0.85 - pass) runtime: cloud tier: starter base model: none (recipe-only) signature: valid (hmac-sha256) recipes: 1 (redact-identifiers-v1) evals: 10 cases
signature: valid means the HMAC chain end-to-end re-verifies on your hardware. The artifact has not been tampered with since it left the compile pipeline.Run it offline.
60 secondskolm run executes the artifact against an input. JSON in, JSON out. The execution is local; no network call.
echo {"text":"patient John Doe, SSN 123-45-6789, email j.doe@hospital.org"} | kolm run my-redactor.kolm
patient [REDACTED_NAME], SSN [REDACTED_SSN], email [REDACTED_EMAIL] recipe: redact-identifiers-v1 . 3.2 ms
Or with a file input (works on Windows cmd too, no quoting headaches):
echo {"text":"call me at 415-555-2244"} > sample.json
kolm run my-redactor.kolm --input sample.json
call me at [REDACTED_PHONE] recipe: redact-identifiers-v1 . 2.8 ms
kolm build.Eject and audit.
30 secondsThe .kolm file is a zip with deterministic contents. kolm eject unpacks it. Nothing is hidden; nothing is encrypted. This is the "no lock-in" promise made into a verb.
kolm eject my-redactor.kolm
ejected my-redactor.kolm -> ./my-redactor.eject 9 files, sha256=a1b2c3d4e5f6... no lock-in. your AI is yours. cat ./my-redactor.eject/EJECT_README.md # what each file is cat ./my-redactor.eject/manifest.json # task, base, K-score kolm inspect my-redactor.kolm # re-verify the signature chain
Inside the ejected folder:
- manifest.json task, base model, signing mode, K-score, content hashes
- spec.json the spec you compiled from, verbatim
- recipes/ deterministic JS routines kolm chose to satisfy the spec
- evals.jsonl the (input, expected) cases that produced the K-score
- receipts/ HMAC chain receipts proving the compile pipeline ran end-to-end
- signature.json detached signature over manifest + recipes + evals
- EJECT_README.md plain-English guide to every file, auto-generated
What just happened
You compiled a spec into a deterministic AI artifact and ran it on your hardware. The artifact has a measurable accuracy score (K), a cryptographic signature, and a fully auditable bill of materials. No vendor lock-in: the file is a standard zip, the recipe inside is plain JavaScript, and the algorithm that scored it is open-source. The whole thing is 28 KB.
This is the minimum viable kolm. Everything else in the product (cloud GPU training, team-private hub, edge export to phones, RAG attachment, agent observation loops) is built on top of this one shape.
What to do next
golden path 2
Distill your OpenAI usage
Capture prompt-response pairs from your live OpenAI calls and compile them into a .kolm that runs offline.
golden path 3
Deploy a .kolm to a phone
Export the same artifact to iPhone or Android in five minutes. CoreML, ONNX Mobile, MLX.
browse
Public artifact hub
Verified .kolm artifacts to fork. Healthcare, legal, finance, code, edge. All with K-scores.
If something went wrong
- npm error: Node version mismatch.
node --versionmust be 20.0.0 or higher. - K-score below 0.85: the iterate guidance prints next steps. Most common fix:
kolm seeds validate my-redactor.seeds.jsonlto check the seed set, then re-runkolm build. - Windows cmd quoting: single quotes around JSON do not work in
cmd.exe. Use--input <file>or pipe viaechoas shown above. - kolm: command not found:
npm config get prefixshould be on yourPATH. Or runnpx -y github:sneaky-hippo/kolmogorov-stack build my-redactor --from redactor --yes. - Still stuck: open an issue at github.com/sneaky-hippo/kolmogorov-stack/issues or email hello@kolm.ai.