Install¶

Install Caffold on the computer that will run your agents, a Mac or a Linux machine: the Caffold host. Other devices need no installation beyond a browser; they connect to the host.

Requirements¶

A host that is one of:
- an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 14 or later, with Homebrew, which installs and updates Caffold;
- an x86_64 or aarch64 Linux machine with glibc 2.28 or later and systemd, such as Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 10, RHEL 8, or a later release.
Git, for repository and worktree features.
At least one coding agent installed and signed in on the host: Codex, Claude Code, Grok, or Antigravity. Set up your agents lists the supported versions and steps.

Optional:

Tailscale, to open Caffold from other devices. See Use other devices.
The GitHub CLI, signed in, for Issue and Pull Request views. See GitHub.

Install on a Mac¶

brew install --cask panarch/tap/caffold

This installs Caffold Server in /Applications and links the bundled caffold command. To open Caffold:

Launch Caffold Server from Applications. It appears in the menu bar instead of opening a window.
Choose Open Caffold from its menu.

Your browser opens http://127.0.0.1:5178. That page is the whole Caffold workspace; the menu-bar app only starts and controls the server.

Install on Linux¶

Run this as the user Caffold will run as:

curl -fsSL https://caffold.dev/install.sh | sh

The script installs Caffold in ~/.local/share/caffold, links the caffold command in ~/.local/bin, and starts the systemd user service caffold.service, which serves Caffold at http://127.0.0.1:5178. It also:

keeps the service running after you log out, or shows the sudo command that does;
turns on Tailscale Serve when Tailscale is installed, and shows the address to open on your other devices. If Tailscale denies it, run sudo tailscale set --operator=$USER and run the script again.

On NixOS, enable programs.nix-ld in your configuration before you run the script.

Open the address the script shows. Without Tailscale, forward the port over SSH from your computer, for example ssh -L 5178:127.0.0.1:5178 your-host, and open http://127.0.0.1:5178.

Next, set up your agents.