Install

DevRecall ships in three forms:

• CLI — single Go binary, all platforms
• macOS desktop app — Tauri menu-bar app that wraps the CLI
• Source build — for contributors and platforms without prebuilts

All install paths pull artifacts from GitHub Releases. Each release ships a checksums.sha256 you can verify.

macOS — desktop app

The Homebrew cask installs the desktop app and the CLI in one go:

brew tap pavelpilyak/devrecall
brew install --cask devrecall

After install, launch DevRecall from Spotlight. The CLI is also on your $PATH as devrecall.

First launch: Gatekeeper warning

DevRecall builds aren’t notarized with Apple yet, so on first launch you’ll see:

“DevRecall.app cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.”

This is expected for unsigned open-source apps — the binary is the same one you can build yourself from source. To allow it:

1. Open Finder → Applications.
2. Right-click (or Control-click) DevRecall → Open.
3. Click Open in the dialog that appears.

You only do this once. macOS remembers the choice for future launches.

If you’d rather skip the dialog entirely, strip the quarantine attribute:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/DevRecall.app

Notarized builds are on the roadmap.

Linux — CLI only (Linuxbrew)

For terminal-only Linux users on Linuxbrew:

brew tap pavelpilyak/devrecall
brew install devrecall-cli

The formula downloads a prebuilt tarball for your platform (linux × arm64/x86_64) and installs devrecall into $(brew --prefix)/bin.

The tap repo is pavelpilyak/homebrew-devrecall.

On macOS, install the cask above instead — it already bundles the CLI. Mixing the cask and the formula leaves a shadowing symlink in $(brew --prefix)/bin that points at the older one.

Plain tarball (any Unix)

Download the matching tarball from the Releases page:

• devrecall-darwin-aarch64.tar.gz — Apple Silicon
• devrecall-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz — Intel Mac
• devrecall-linux-aarch64.tar.gz
• devrecall-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

tar xzf devrecall-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
sudo mv devrecall /usr/local/bin/
devrecall --version

Verify checksums

Replace <version> with the release you downloaded (e.g. v0.1.11):

curl -LO https://github.com/pavelpilyak/devrecall/releases/download/<version>/checksums.sha256
shasum -a 256 -c checksums.sha256 --ignore-missing

From source

git clone https://github.com/pavelpilyak/devrecall
cd devrecall
make build           # produces bin/devrecall
./bin/devrecall --version

Requires:

• Go 1.22+
• A C toolchain (CGO is needed for SQLite FTS5)

The build uses tags fts5 (full-text search) and GO (pure-Go ONNX backend for embeddings) — both are wired up in the Makefile, no extra flags needed.

What gets installed where

Path	Purpose
~/.devrecall/config.json	Config (port, sources, LLM, etc.)
~/.devrecall/devrecall.db	SQLite database (activities + FTS5)
~/.devrecall/tokens/	OAuth tokens (0600)
$(brew --prefix)/bin/devrecall	CLI binary (Homebrew)
/Applications/DevRecall.app	Desktop app (Homebrew cask)

Next: Quickstart →