Install Daintree

System requirements, downloading and installing Daintree on macOS, Windows and Linux, the startup Git check, and installing the agent CLIs Daintree launches.

Updated Sep 5, 2026

Reviewed Sep 5, 2026

System requirements

Daintree runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux and bundles its Electron runtime. Its setup checks these four tools on your PATH; selected agents can add stricter prerequisites:

Tool	Requirement	Why
Git	Required	Worktrees, diffs, and every review surface are built on it. No minimum version is enforced beyond Git being present and runnable.
Node.js	Required, v18.0.0 or later	Installs agent CLIs through npm and backs several agent runtimes.
npm	Recommended	Ships with Node.js. Missing npm produces a warning, not a block.
GitHub CLI (`gh`)	Recommended	Powers Code Forge: issues, pull requests, and CI status. A warning, not a block.

To launch a coding agent, install at least one agent CLI and make it available on your PATH. Terminals, browsers, and other workspace tools are usable without one. See Installing agent CLIs below, and AI Agents for the full roster of 17 built-in agents.

Note

Node.js v18 is the setup checker's baseline for external tooling, not a guarantee that every agent supports it. Building Daintree from source uses Node 22.23.2, matching the repository's .nvmrc and engines floor. See Build From Source if that's the path you're on.

The startup Git check

A missing Git used to surface as a raw spawn git ENOENT part way into your first clone. Daintree now probes for the required tools shortly after first paint and shows a global banner: Git is missing, Git is out of date, or Required tools are missing when more than one is absent, with the exact install command underneath it. An entry also lands in your inbox once per session, so the warning survives a higher-priority banner taking the slot.

The check re-runs when you focus the Daintree window, so installing Git while Daintree is open clears the banner without a restart. The probe is deliberately off the boot path: it spawns subprocesses and re-reads your PATH, and neither belongs in front of first paint.

The one-click Install Git button is not available everywhere:

macOS. Runs brew install git. The Xcode Command Line Tools route (xcode-select --install) hands off to Apple's own GUI installer instead, and the banner changes to Finish the macOS installer, then re-check.
Windows. Runs the winget install.
Linux. No one-click install. The apt command is sudo apt-get install git, and Daintree refuses to run anything starting with sudo: piped stdio would hang forever on a password prompt you can't see. You get the command to copy and a View install guide button.

The button also disappears if the package manager it would call isn't itself on your PATH. Homebrew is not a given on macOS and winget is absent from plenty of Windows images, and a button that can only fail is worse than no button.

Download & install

Download the latest release for your platform. Architecture (x64 vs arm64) is a separate question from the packaging format. Pick the format you want; Daintree sorts out the architecture:

Platform	Format	Architecture
macOS	DMG / ZIP	Apple Silicon (arm64), Intel (x64), or Universal
Windows	NSIS installer (direct download) / Microsoft Store	NSIS: x64 + arm64 / Store: x64
Linux	AppImage / DEB	x64

Most people want the DMG on macOS and the NSIS installer on Windows.

Open the .dmg file and drag Daintree into your Applications folder. On first launch, macOS may ask you to confirm the app, since it comes from an identified developer.

There are two ways to install on Windows:

Direct download (NSIS installer). Run the .exe and follow the prompts. Separate x64 and arm64 installers are published; each installs per-user (no admin rights needed) and updates itself in the background.
Microsoft Store. Install Daintree as a Store app (x64). Windows handles updates instead of Daintree's in-app updater.

Note

The two builds update differently. The direct-download installer updates itself in the background. The Microsoft Store build hands the update cycle to Windows, so Daintree's in-app updater is disabled; when a new version lands you get an inbox notification with a link to the Store. See Updates for how the background update flow and release channels work.

Daintree reads the Windows registry (HKLM and HKCU Environment keys) at startup and supplements your PATH with common tool locations. Tools installed via npm, Git, Scoop, Chocolatey, Volta, pnpm, fnm, and nvm-windows show up without restarting your terminal session.

For the integrated terminal, Daintree uses PowerShell 7 (pwsh.exe) if it's on your PATH, falls back to Windows PowerShell 5 (powershell.exe), and finally to cmd.exe.

The DEB package is the option to use on Ubuntu and Debian-based distributions. It handles desktop integration, AppArmor sandbox configuration, and PATH setup for you:

sudo dpkg -i daintree_*.deb

The DEB installer creates a /usr/bin/daintree symlink and loads the AppArmor profile that the Chromium sandbox needs on Ubuntu 24.04+.

The AppImage is an alternative for distributions that provide the required system libraries and Chromium sandbox support:

chmod +x Daintree-*.AppImage
./Daintree-*.AppImage

Warning

If the AppImage fails at startup on Ubuntu 24.04 or later, check the terminal output for a sandbox or user-namespace error. The DEB package includes Daintree's AppArmor profile and is the supported route described here. Do not diagnose every startup crash as the same problem or disable the Chromium sandbox to get past it. A missing FUSE 2 library is a separate error; on Ubuntu 24.04 its package is libfuse2t64.

Tip

Wayland is detected automatically. Daintree reads XDG_SESSION_TYPE at startup and turns on native Wayland rendering, window decorations, and IME input support. No flags or environment variables required.

Linux uses the native OS title bar rather than a custom frameless window, so Daintree follows your desktop environment's window decoration theme.

Installing agent CLIs

Daintree runs AI coding agents as CLI processes: it doesn't bundle any of them. Install the ones you plan to use, or let the setup wizard run these commands for you. The commands below reflect Daintree's checked-in installation options. Some are manual commands; a script piped to a shell is shown for you to copy, not executed by the wizard.

Claude Code

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Then authenticate with claude auth login. For one-off use without a global install, run npx @anthropic-ai/claude-code instead.

Codex CLI

npm install -g @openai/codex

Then authenticate with codex auth login.

OpenCode

npm install -g opencode-ai@latest

OpenCode also installs through platform-specific methods:

curl -fsSL https://opencode.ai/install | bash

Also available via Homebrew:

brew install opencode

scoop bucket add extras
scoop install extras/opencode

Also available via Chocolatey:

choco install opencode

curl -fsSL https://opencode.ai/install | bash

Also available via Homebrew, or Paru on Arch:

brew install opencode
paru -S opencode-bin

Cursor Agent

curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash

irm 'https://cursor.com/install?win32=true' | iex

curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash

Once it's installed, run cursor-agent login to authenticate.

Kiro

curl -fsSL https://cli.kiro.dev/install | bash

Confirm the install with kiro-cli --version, then sign in through Kiro's login flow. The Kiro CLI documentation has the rest.

Note

Kiro CLI doesn't run on Windows: Daintree only carries macOS and Linux install commands for it. Use a macOS or Linux machine, or run Kiro inside WSL and launch it from Daintree once it's on your PATH.

Copilot

npm install -g @github/copilot

Confirm the install with copilot --version, then sign in:

copilot login

The Copilot CLI documentation has the rest.

Note

Daintree's Copilot configuration requires Node.js 22 or later, above the setup checker's general Node 18 baseline. Check your version with node --version before you install.

Warning

Daintree marks Gemini CLI as deprecated in its agent registry. Existing sessions still have documented launch and resume behavior; see the Gemini integration guide. For a new Google CLI setup, see Antigravity. Provider availability and account eligibility are separate from what Daintree can launch.

Tip

Daintree detects which agent CLIs are on your PATH and adjusts the UI to match. To see what it found, open Settings > CLI Agents. The ten built-in agents not covered above (Aider, Antigravity, Grok, Goose, Amp, Crush, Qwen, Kimi, Open Interpreter, and Mistral) each have their own page under AI Agents.