Installation
Three ways to install harness-kit — pick what fits your workflow.
Desktop App
Observatory, Memory, Board, and AI Chat — all in one native app. The best way to see and manage your harness.
Skills & Plugins
Slash commands for Claude Code. Add the marketplace, install any plugin by name.
CLI
Compile harness.yaml, sync plugins, detect drift — from the terminal.
Desktop App
The full harness-kit experience. Observatory, Memory, Board, and a Cmd+K command palette — all in one native app with a visual interface for managing your AI tool configurations.
Tap the Harness Kit Homebrew cask
brew tap harnessprotocol/tap
brew install --cask harness-kitClear the quarantine flag
The app is not yet notarized. Run this before first launch:
xattr -cr "/Applications/Harness Kit.app"Or right-click the app in Finder → Open → confirm.
Launch from Applications or Spotlight
Search Harness Kit or open from /Applications/Harness Kit.app.
Download the DMG
Download the .dmg for your architecture from GitHub Releases.
Drag to Applications
Open the .dmg and drag Harness Kit to your Applications folder.
Clear the quarantine flag
xattr -cr "/Applications/Harness Kit.app"Launch from Applications or Spotlight
Install the nightly build
Rebuilt daily from main. Use this to get the latest features before a stable release.
brew tap harnessprotocol/tap
brew install --cask harnessprotocol/tap/'harness-kit@nightly'Clear the quarantine flag
xattr -cr "/Applications/Harness Kit.app"Launch from Applications or Spotlight
Search Harness Kit or open from /Applications/Harness Kit.app.
To switch back to stable
brew uninstall --cask harnessprotocol/tap/'harness-kit@nightly'
brew install --cask harnessprotocol/tap/harness-kitNightly builds may be unstable
These are unversioned builds from the tip of main. Rebuilt every day at midnight UTC. Data formats and APIs may change without notice.
System requirements
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon (arm64). Intel builds are planned.
Skills & Plugins
Slash commands for Claude Code. Add the marketplace once, install any plugin by name.
Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add harnessprotocol/harness-kitInstall plugins by name
/plugin install research@harness-kit
/plugin install explain@harness-kit
/plugin install orient@harness-kitNo plugin marketplace access? Use the install script:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harnessprotocol/harness-kit/main/install.sh | bashThis copies skill files to ~/.claude/skills/ over HTTPS. Bundled scripts (like the research index rebuilder) require the full marketplace install.
Verify: invoke any skill after installing:
/research
/explain src/main.tsUsing with other tools
SKILL.md files are plain markdown — copy them into any tool's instruction system. See Using with Other Tools for Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf setup.
CLI
Compile harness.yaml, sync plugins, detect drift — from the terminal.
brew tap harnessprotocol/tap
brew install harness-kitnpm install -g @harness-kit/cliRequires Node.js 22 or later.
Download the standalone binary (no Node.js required) from GitHub Releases:
tar -xzf harness-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
chmod +x harness
sudo mv harness /usr/local/bin/brew tap harnessprotocol/tap
brew install harnessprotocol/tap/harness-kit-nightlyLatest build from main. Rebuilt daily at midnight UTC. Installs as harness-kit-nightly — no conflict with the stable harness-kit binary.
Verify:
harness --version
harness validatePlugin Requirements
Environment variables
Some plugins use optional env vars. See Secrets Management for how to configure them.