Forward Impact Team

Getting Started: Basecamp for Engineers

Basecamp is your personal operations center. It syncs email and calendar, builds a knowledge graph, drafts responses, and prepares meeting briefings — all running as scheduled AI tasks in the background.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 18+
  • npm
  • macOS (for Apple Mail and Calendar sync)
  • Claude Code installed via Homebrew (brew install claude) — Basecamp spawns claude as a subprocess and the Homebrew install supports NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS for enterprise CA certificates

If your network requires a custom CA bundle, add an env block to ~/.fit/basecamp/scheduler.json: 

{
  "env": {
    "NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS": "~/.config/ssl/ca-bundle.pem"
  }
}

Install

npm install @forwardimpact/basecamp

Initialize a knowledge base

npx fit-basecamp init ~/Documents/Personal

Check status

npx fit-basecamp status

Run the scheduler

npx fit-basecamp daemon

Basecamp runs as a macOS status menu app with scheduled AI tasks handling background work. The CLI scheduler works on any platform.

macOS Privacy & Security

Basecamp agents need access to specific folders (Documents, Mail, Calendar). When macOS prompts, grant only the folders each process needs via System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files & Folders:

  • Basecamp.app — the TCC responsible process (Swift launcher)
  • node — runs skill scripts with #!/usr/bin/env node shebangs
  • "2.1.72" (or another version number) — this is the Claude Code CLI. macOS shows its version string instead of a name. Safe to grant per-folder access.

Next steps