Install and sign in

Scrambo is a thin Python SDK for the closed-alpha cloud editor. Installing it, signing in, and exporting all need a real machine with network access and a browser, so these steps run on your own machine.

Quick start

Scrambo is in closed-alpha prerelease, so only prerelease versions are published — pin the current alpha and allow prereleases so uv accepts it. This gets you from nothing installed to a running program:

uv init my-first-edit && cd my-first-edit
uv add "scrambo==0.1.0a8" --prerelease allow
uv run make_reel.py

uv add creates and manages the virtual environment automatically, so every uv run executes inside it — there is nothing else to activate. make_reel.py is your program; see Start with the smallest useful program for the shortest one that does something.

The first cloud call in that program pauses and opens your browser to sign in — see Sign in below before you run it, so the program does not sit waiting on a browser tab you weren't expecting.

Don't have uv yet? See Installing uv below, or skip it and install with plain pip instead.

Sign in

There is no API token to paste. On the first cloud call the SDK opens your browser to sign in with a one-time email PIN (the same Cloudflare Access identity the editor uses) and caches the credential in ~/.scrambo/credentials.json.

Because sign-in needs an interactive browser, it is easiest to sign in ahead of time and confirm it succeeded before running an editing program. Manage the credential with the bundled CLI:

uv run scrambo login    # sign in ahead of time
uv run scrambo whoami   # show the signed-in identity
uv run scrambo logout   # clear the saved credential

The closed alpha has no prepaid credits, wallet, top-ups, or Stripe flow. Operator cost controls may stop new paid work after the account reaches its configured soft spending cap; they are not customer billing.

Outside a uv project, drop the uv run prefix and call scrambo directly.

With the SDK installed and signed in, continue to the quickstart to write and run your first edit.

Installing uv

A clean, managed environment via uv is recommended over a global install, and is what the quick start above uses. Install uv with your platform's package manager:

brew install uv               # macOS (Homebrew)
pipx install uv               # any OS, if pipx is available
winget install astral-sh.uv   # Windows (winget)

Or use Astral's official install scripts:

# macOS / Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

See Astral's installation guide for other options.

Installing with plain pip

If you'd rather not use uv, a plain pip install scrambo fails with "no matching distribution" — pin the current alpha instead. An exact prerelease pin installs without needing --pre:

pip install scrambo==0.1.0a8

That is enough to get started; run your program the normal way (python make_reel.py) instead of through uv run.