How to Set Up Amplitude Analytics from Your Terminal

Terminal setup with Amplitude comes in three forms, and most teams end up using more than one.

• Coding agent setup. You paste a setup prompt into a coding agent such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex. The agent reads your codebase, installs the right SDK, instruments an event you choose, and checks that your project is receiving data.
• Package install. You add the SDK yourself with your package manager (npm install @amplitude/unified, pip install amplitude-analytics, or flutter pub add amplitude_flutter) and write the initialization code.
• The Amplitude CLI. amp is a command-line client for Amplitude's Developer API. Your SDK instruments the app; amp sets up and administers the objects around it, such as projects, taxonomy, feature flags, saved charts, and destinations. Coding agents also use it to fetch Amplitude's setup instructions.

Here's how that plays out for a small team. One engineer pastes the setup prompt into Claude Code on Friday afternoon, approves the diff, and sees events arriving before the end of the day. On Monday, a teammate scripts the team's feature flags with amp so new environments get the same setup every time.

Agentic Setup gives your coding agent stack-specific instructions for adding Amplitude to a web, mobile, or backend app. The agent inspects your existing codebase, instruments one meaningful event, and checks whether your project is receiving data. For supported frameworks, it also turns on automatic event tracking and session replay.

You start Agentic Setup from your project's Setup page in Amplitude. To run it:

1. In Amplitude, open your project's Setup page.
2. Select the coding-agent setup option and copy the generated prompt.
3. Open your app's repository in your coding agent and paste the prompt.
4. Review the app root, project, region, and candidate events that the agent identifies.
5. Pick one meaningful event from your app. The agent fetches the matching setup skill and implements the SDK integration for that event.
6. Run the app and perform the action that triggers the event when the agent asks you to.
7. Let the agent run its ingestion check, then review the changes before you commit them.

Behind the scenes, the agent uses the Amplitude CLI to fetch a maintained setup skill for your data region. In the US region, that command is:

After you trigger the event, the agent runs a bounded ingestion check with your project API key:

Agentic Setup only needs your public, ingestion-scoped project API key. It doesn't need an Amplitude Secret Key or a CLI login, and you should never paste a Secret Key into the agent for this workflow. The full walkthrough lives in Set up Amplitude with a coding agent.

Working on a JavaScript web app and want a lighter-weight install? The Amplitude Quickstart also includes a ready-made AI prompt that you can paste into Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or another assistant that can edit your project.

The commands you run depend on your stack. Here's what setup looks like for the most common builder frameworks, using the install steps from the Amplitude Quickstart.

Next.js

Next.js renders on the server, so the main thing to get right is where Amplitude initializes. The Quickstart AI prompt tells your coding agent to run the implementation only on the client, initialize Amplitude once during app load, install the correct browser package, enable autocapture and session replay, turn on remote config, and keep your existing TypeScript and framework patterns. If you'd rather write it yourself, install the Browser Unified SDK and call initAll once from a client-side entry point.

React (single-page app)

For React apps built with Vite or a custom setup, install the Browser Unified SDK from your project directory:

Then call initAll("AMPLITUDE_API_KEY") once when the app starts, and use track("Button Clicked", { buttonId: "signup" }) anywhere you want a custom event. The Unified SDK includes analytics, session replay, feature experimentation, and guides and surveys through one API. Session replay turns on when you set sessionReplay.sampleRate to a value above zero.

Python (Django and Flask)

Install the Python SDK with pip install amplitude-analytics, create one Amplitude("AMPLITUDE_API_KEY") client when your app starts, and send events with BaseEvent and a user_id. Because Django and Flask apps run business logic on the server, server-side events are the place to track things like sign-ups, logins, and completed transactions.

Flutter

Add the Flutter SDK with flutter pub add amplitude_flutter, create an Amplitude instance with your API key in a Configuration, wait for amplitude.isBuilt, and call amplitude.track(BaseEvent('Button Clicked')) for your first event.

Amplitude works inside the AI coding tools builders already use, so you can set up and query analytics without switching to a browser.

Claude Code. Install the Amplitude plugin from the Amplitude MCP marketplace with /plugin marketplace add amplitude/mcp-marketplace, then /plugin install amplitude@amplitude. The plugin adds skills such as create-chart, create-dashboard, instrument-events, replay-ux-audit, and weekly-brief.

Cursor and other MCP clients. Connect the Amplitude MCP server to ask questions like "what's my conversion rate this week" from your editor. Setup uses OAuth and takes about two minutes per client. Cursor supports a one-click install.

Scripts and CI. Use amp where a conversational interface isn't the right fit. For non-interactive environments, amp auth pat --with-token saves an existing Personal Access Token as a profile instead of running the browser login.

Manage Amplitude with the Amplitude CLI

The Amplitude CLI is a command-line client for the Developer API. Every command maps to an API operation, so anything you do in a terminal you can also do in a script, a CI job, or an agent's shell. You need Node.js installed to run it.

To go from a fresh install to your first feature flag:

amp auth login uses an OAuth device flow, so you approve the request in your browser. In an interactive terminal, list commands print readable tables. Pipe the output or pass --json and you get compact API JSON instead, which is easier for scripts and agents to parse. To try a command without a global install, run npx @amplitude/developer-cli help. The CLI quickstart covers each step.

Verification works a little differently depending on how you set up.

If you used Agentic Setup, the agent's ingestion check reports whether your project received any recent event. It doesn't confirm which event arrived or how many times. If the check doesn't see data, open the live event feed on your project's Setup page to confirm the event you picked.

To verify manually or debug later:

1. Open the Amplitude Debugger. It shows events arriving in real time, including event names, properties, user IDs, and timestamps.
2. Fire a few actions in your app (click a button, move between pages, submit a form) and confirm the matching events appear.
3. Create your first chart so you can see the data you're collecting.

If events aren't showing up, check three things first: the API key matches the project you're looking at, the data region matches (EU projects use the EU endpoints), and Amplitude initializes once in the right app and runtime.

A coding agent is the most hands-off path for an existing codebase, but it's not the only option. Here's when to use each approach with Amplitude Analytics.

For manual setup, see the Amplitude Quickstart or the SDK documentation for your platform.

Setting up analytics is the one thing standing between building your product and understanding how people use it. Paste the setup prompt into your coding agent, or install the SDK with one command and initialize it with your project API key.