CLI Getting Started Guide

ed guide

Prints the built-in manual, the same text the app ships to explain itself.

ed guide [<topic>]

Arguments

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
<topic>	claude, case-insensitive	none, meaning the full manual	Which text to print

There is no --json. The output is prose, it is static, and it needs neither the app, the network, nor a machine.

Examples

ed guide
ed guide claude
ed guide | less

ed guide claude prints a section you can paste into any repository's CLAUDE.md so an agent working there knows ed exists, knows every read command takes --json, and knows the exit codes are worth gating on.

Any topic other than claude exits 3 and says what the two options are:

$ ed guide nope
error: no guide topic named nope
hint: try `ed guide` or `ed guide claude`

Where to go next

• Getting started with ed, the rest of this group
• All ed commands