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Install

elanous runs on Bun (not Node) on macOS, Linux and WSL2; Windows native PowerShell is experimental.

One line​

curl -fsSL https://github.com/ElanvitalAI/elanous/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Or with npm (needs Bun on your PATH):

npm install -g elanous

Coming from monad (0.1.x)? Don't use monad update to move — see Moving from monad.

The installer:

  • downloads the latest release and checks it against SHA256SUMS — a mismatch stops the install,
  • installs bun with its official installer if it is missing, at the version pinned in .bun-version (turn this off with --no-bootstrap-bun; ELANOUS_BUN_VERSION=latest lifts the pin),
  • installs into ~/.local/share/elanous (override with --prefix PATH or ELANOUS_INSTALL_PREFIX),
  • adds ~/.local/share/elanous/bin to your shell PATH (skip with --no-modify-path),
  • if a command it needs is missing, names all of them in one install line (without sudo when you are root),
  • ends by telling you the next step based on what it found (for example, whether you are logged in yet).

Open a new shell, then check:

elanous --version     # prints the version and the commit it was built from
elanous doctor        # what this machine still needs — a report, not a gate

Pin a version with ELANOUS_VERSION (Elanous releases start at 0.2.0):

curl -fsSL https://github.com/ElanvitalAI/elanous/releases/latest/download/install.sh | ELANOUS_VERSION=0.2.0 bash

Windows (native PowerShell) — experimental​

irm https://github.com/ElanvitalAI/elanous/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex
elanous --version

It installs into %LOCALAPPDATA%\elanous (override with -Prefix PATH or ELANOUS_INSTALL_PREFIX) with the same layout as below — current is a directory junction, so no administrator rights are needed — and adds bin to your PowerShell profile (skip with -NoModifyPath). WSL2 remains the recommended way to run the harness on Windows.

From a bare Linux machine​

A bare image may not even have curl, so install the basics first:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y curl ca-certificates unzip git
curl -fsSL https://github.com/ElanvitalAI/elanous/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc
elanous --version && elanous doctor

That is enough to boot. To run the daemon and the harness, let doctor install what they need — build tools and the node-pty rebuild, a pinned static gh, rg, Node and the Codex CLI (about 80 seconds on a bare Debian 12 VM):

elanous doctor --fix --yes --sudo
  • ⚠️ Do not install gh from Debian/Ubuntu apt — those packages (Debian 12: 2.23, Ubuntu 24.04: 2.45) are older than the 2.80 the harness needs. elanous doctor --fix --yes fetches a pinned one.
  • If terminal features stay dark, run elanous doctor --fix --yes again — it rebuilds node-pty for the installed version. Re-running the installer on the same version does not.
  • Prefer to install by hand? sudo apt-get install -y build-essential ripgrep, Node 20+ and npm install -g @openai/codex are the equivalent.

Run the daemon in the background​

elanous nexus install --systemd-user    # Linux: active, enabled, and survives reboots without a login
elanous nexus install --launchd         # macOS

The daemon's port answers about 30 seconds after it starts.

From a checkout​

git clone https://github.com/ElanvitalAI/elanous && cd elanous
bash scripts/install.sh               # same installer, installing this checkout (folder named by commit)

Layout​

~/.local/share/elanous/
  versions/<version>/            one folder per installed version (older ones are kept)
  current -> versions/…          the active version
  bin/elanous                      the command on your PATH
  install.json                   what is installed, from where, which commit

Your settings, logins and logs live in ~/.elanous; your memory lives in ~/.local/share/elanous/memory (inside the install folder). The installer never touches either, and the uninstaller removes only what the installer created (versions/, current, bin/, install.json) and names everything it keeps.

Update, roll back, uninstall​

elanous self-update                              # latest release; the previous version stays for rollback
elanous self-update --version 0.1.1              # a specific release
ln -sfn versions/<previous> ~/.local/share/elanous/current      # roll back
curl -fsSL https://github.com/ElanvitalAI/elanous/releases/latest/download/uninstall.sh | bash

If you run the background service, restart it after an update — see troubleshooting.

Known limits​

  • On Linux, node-pty has no prebuilt binary; elanous falls back to Bun's own PTY and nothing breaks. elanous doctor --fix --yes rebuilds it when a C++ toolchain is present.
  • If bun install silently skips an optional dependency on Linux, check whether TMPDIR and Bun's cache are on different filesystems — elanous doctor reports it as bun-tmpdir, and elanous doctor --fix --yes adds the fix to your shell startup file. See troubleshooting.

Next: quickstart.