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Three commands, in the order you will want them.

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Which version am I on

Why it works. This prints the version compiled into the binary you are actually running. It cannot be wrong about that. The gotcha. Do not confuse it with the version recorded in ~/.base-gbl/manifest.toml. That is tracked separately and can drift, most easily by swapping the binary by hand without touching the manifest. When the two disagree, base --version is the truth and the manifest is the thing to fix.

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Is there a newer one

Why it works. It re-validates against the remote source rather than reading a cached answer, so it tells you the actual current state. The base binary is checked against GitHub releases; other ChrisAI components are checked against npm.

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Updating

--force reinstalls even when you are already current, which is the way out of a state where the manifest and the binary disagree.

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Quieting the banner

Dismisses it for 24 hours by writing an expiry into the manifest. Why it works. The banner reads from manifest.toml, which holds the installed version, the install path and timestamp per component, plus an update-check block with when it last checked, how long between checks (7 days by default), any pending update, and the snooze expiry. The gotcha. That single file being the source of truth is exactly why a hand-swapped binary makes the banner nag about a version you already have. base update --force rewrites it.

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What an update does not do

base update does not refresh the bundled base-help skill. It moves the binary and leaves ~/.claude/skills/base-help/ exactly as it was, because nothing in the update path installs skills.Run base install again to refresh it. Verified from source at 4866996, the commit the shipped 0.13.2 binary was built from: the skill installer has exactly one caller, and it is base install.
This matters more than it sounds, because the skill is the answer surface. Its answer bank stamps itself with the version it was checked against, and it is written to treat every answer as a lead to re-verify when your installed version does not match that stamp. So a stale skill degrades honestly rather than lying to you. It still degrades. After any update, run base install again. It takes seconds and it puts the coach back in step with the binary.

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After an update

Confirm the version moved, the graph is still sound, and your star commands still load. A commands.toml that stops parsing takes every star command in that tier with it silently, and base doctor is what tells you.

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Next

Coach mode

The bundled skill, and why keeping it current matters.

Known issues

Behaviour that will surprise you, checked against the version that ships today.