Prerequisites

You do not need to be a terminal expert. You need a terminal, a GitHub login, and one coding agent that brnrd can drive. Set these up once, in order.

1. A terminal

On macOS, open Terminal from Applications → Utilities. On Linux, use the terminal app that came with your desktop.

On Windows, first install WSL 2, then do the rest of this guide inside its Ubuntu terminal. Everything below is plain Linux from there — though we have not traced the WSL path end to end yet, so treat it as adventurous and tell us what you hit. Native Windows (without WSL) is not a supported path.

2. Git and GitHub CLI

Install both tools for your system:

• macOS: Git and GitHub CLI (gh)
• Linux or WSL: Git and GitHub CLI (gh)

If you do not have a GitHub account, create one at github.com/signup.

Then connect gh to that account:

gh auth login

Choose GitHub.com, then HTTPS, and let gh authenticate Git for you. You do not need to create or configure an SSH key; this HTTPS login covers the Git operations brnrd performs.

3. One coding agent

Choose one. brnrd runs the CLI on your machine using its own subscription login; you do not need a separate brnrd model key.

• Claude Code: install it using Anthropic’s setup guide, then sign in with a Claude Pro or Max subscription.
• Codex CLI: install it using OpenAI’s CLI guide, then sign in with ChatGPT. ChatGPT Plus—the US $20/month plan—is enough to start; availability and limits vary by plan and region.

4. The install runtime

Live in Node already? You’re home: npm install -g brnrd on the next page is the recommended path, and it provisions a private Python for you when the machine has none. Just have a current Node.js LTS installed (on a Mac, brew install node does it).

More of a Python person? The install page also offers uv and pipx — brnrd itself runs on Python 3.10+.

5. A machine that stays awake

brnrd runs on your computer, so your computer’s sleep settings are part of the setup. A run can take an hour; if the machine idle-sleeps in the middle of one, the agent process is suspended and the run dies. The error you get back blames the agent CLI, which makes this easy to misdiagnose for a long time.

macOS. Check the current setting, then turn idle sleep off:

pmset -g custom | grep -A20 'AC Power' | grep ' sleep'
sudo pmset -a sleep 0 disksleep 0

sleep 0 means never sleep the machine while on mains. Leave displaysleep alone — the screen going dark is fine and saves the same power; it is the machine going dark that ends runs. On a laptop, closing the lid still sleeps it; if you want runs to survive a closed lid, keep it plugged in and open, or use caffeinate -i while work is in flight.

Linux. The equivalent is usually:

sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target

or the sleep settings in your desktop environment’s power panel. A headless server or VM normally needs nothing.

That is the whole toolbox. You are ready to install brnrd.