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 AI Chat — 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
Get HarnessKit-vX.Y.Z-darwin-arm64.dmg 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
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-kit-vX.Y.Z-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
chmod +x harness-kit
sudo mv harness-kit /usr/local/bin/Verify:
harness-kit --version
harness-kit validatePlugin Requirements
The Harness Kit desktop app provides a visual interface for managing configs, running evals, comparing AI tools, and monitoring your setup.
brew tap harnessprotocol/tap # skip if you already ran this for the CLI
brew install --cask harness-kitGatekeeper notice
The app is not yet notarized. After installing, open Terminal and run:
xattr -cr "/Applications/Harness Kit.app"Or right-click the app in Finder and select Open, then confirm.
Download HarnessKit-vX.Y.Z-darwin-arm64.dmg from the latest release:
- Open the
.dmgand drag Harness Kit to your Applications folder. - Remove the quarantine flag before first launch:
xattr -cr "/Applications/Harness Kit.app" - Open from Applications or Spotlight.
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon (arm64) required. Intel Mac builds are planned for a future release.
Plugin Requirements
Environment variables
Some plugins use optional env vars. See Secrets Management for how to configure them.