Install

Install engram to use its command-line client or run a server. Obtaining the binary does not provision a server: connect to an existing deployment, or follow Quickstart to run one with Docker.

Setup requires v0.16.0 or later

Agent Setup is available in v0.16.0, including pre-registered OAuth clients through --auth oauth-client --client-id. Install the released binary below and check its version before continuing. If you have an older binary on PATH, upgrade it first.

Available since v0.17.0

The man pages the cask installs below and plugin-first skill delivery through engram setup --apply shipped in v0.17.0 and were verified against the installed cask on 2026-09-18.

Homebrew

With Homebrew available, install from the engram tap:

brew install seanb4t/tap/engram
engram version --output json

The engram cask selects the macOS or Linux archive for your architecture.

Its install hooks check the installed version, generate bash, zsh, and fish completions, and write one man page per command into Homebrew’s share/man/man1 directory.

After a cask install, man engram and man engram-setup describe the CLI and the setup command; brew uninstall removes them along with the completions. On macOS, the cask also removes quarantine from the downloaded engram executable because the binary is unsigned.

Release archives

Download an archive and checksums.txt from the same GitHub release. This example pins the published version 0.16.0:

System	Processor	Archive
macOS (darwin)	Intel (amd64)	engram_0.16.0_darwin_amd64.tar.gz
macOS (darwin)	Apple silicon (arm64)	engram_0.16.0_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
Linux (linux)	x86-64 (amd64)	engram_0.16.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
Linux (linux)	ARM64 (arm64)	engram_0.16.0_linux_arm64.tar.gz

In a new download directory, set archive to the filename for your system:

archive=engram_0.16.0_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
release_url=https://github.com/seanb4t/engram/releases/download/v0.16.0
curl -fLO "$release_url/$archive"
curl -fLO "$release_url/checksums.txt"
awk -v file="$archive" '$2 == file { print }' checksums.txt > selected-checksum.txt
test -s selected-checksum.txt

Verify the selected archive on macOS:

shasum -a 256 -c selected-checksum.txt

Or on Linux:

sha256sum -c selected-checksum.txt

Continue only if verification reports OK. Extract the archive:

tar -xzf "$archive"

Choose a writable directory on your PATH for the executable. Replace the example directory with your choice, then install and check the version:

engram_bin_dir=/absolute/path/to/your/bin
mkdir -p "$engram_bin_dir"
install -m 0755 engram "$engram_bin_dir/engram"
export PATH="$engram_bin_dir:$PATH"
engram version --output json

Expect "version": "0.16.0" for this archive. Add your chosen directory to your shell’s PATH configuration if it is not already there.

Unsigned binary on macOS

An archive installation does not run Homebrew’s hooks: completions and man pages are not installed by hand, and engram <command> --help covers the same content. If macOS blocks the downloaded executable because it is quarantined, first confirm you downloaded the intended release and verified its checksum. Then remove quarantine only from that executable and retry the version check:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$engram_bin_dir/engram"
"$engram_bin_dir/engram" version --output json

Build from source

Building from source is optional for development. Released binaries already include setup. Start from a local checkout of engram, with the Go version required by its go.mod (currently Go 1.26.3). Building may download the checkout’s Go dependencies.

From the repository root, choose an absolute temporary output directory. Record the revision and check for local changes so you can identify what you built:

git rev-parse HEAD
git status --short
engram_build_dir=/absolute/path/to/temporary/engram-build
mkdir -p "$engram_build_dir"
git rev-parse HEAD > "$engram_build_dir/source-revision.txt"
go build -o "$engram_build_dir/engram" ./cmd/engram
"$engram_build_dir/engram" version --output json
"$engram_build_dir/engram" setup --help

A local build’s version output does not establish a published release. Keep the revision record and note any local changes alongside it. Use the full executable path above wherever the setup guide says engram, or put this temporary directory first on PATH for the current shell:

export PATH="$engram_build_dir:$PATH"

Next steps

• Agent Setup — preview and apply MCP registration with v0.16.0 or later; on a Claude Code or Codex whose plugin CLI works, setup delivers the curation skills plugin-first through the runtime’s own plugin system.
• Headless CLI Client — use the Connect API from a shell.
• Quickstart — provision a server if you do not have one.