Installation

Installation

Getting Codeman onto a machine, verifying it works, updating it, and removing it.

Requirements

Requirement	Notes
macOS or Linux	Windows works through WSL2. See Windows below.
Node.js 22+	The installer offers to install it if missing.
tmux	Not optional. Sessions live inside tmux, which is what makes them survive a server restart, a dropped connection, or a closed laptop.
An agent CLI	At least one of Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, Antigravity, Gemini CLI, Pi. Plain shell sessions need none. See Agent CLIs.

Codeman itself sends no telemetry and phones no home. The only network traffic is your browser to your server, and whatever the agent CLI you chose does on its own.

Route A: the installer (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://getcodeman.com/install | bash

This installs Node.js and tmux if they are missing, clones Codeman into ~/.codeman/app, and builds it.

What it asks you:

1. Permission for every system change. Package installs and agent CLI downloads are prompted individually. Nothing is installed silently.

2. How the dashboard should be reachable. Three choices:

   • Tailscale (recommended for phone access): keeps the loopback bind and walks you through tailscale serve, including the tailnet HTTPS toggle, then verifies the result end to end.
   • Your local network (0.0.0.0): prompts for a password. Skipping the password takes an explicit confirmation and ends on a loud warning.
   • This machine only (127.0.0.1): the safest option, and the default for a bare codeman web regardless of what you pick here.

   Which one is preselected depends on what the installer finds. A fresh install defaults to the local network, unless Tailscale is already connected, in which case it defaults to Tailscale. An existing loopback install defaults to keeping loopback, or to Tailscale when a serve mapping for Codeman is already there. A bare Enter never pulls in new software, and a non-interactive run always keeps the safe loopback default.

3. What to do when it finishes. Run in this terminal, install as a background service that starts on boot, or do nothing yet.

Re-running the same one-liner updates an existing install in place. Local changes in ~/.codeman/app are stashed rather than discarded, a running service is restarted and verified, and your existing network binding is preserved. An interrupted first install resumes instead of restarting.

Two other entry points exist:

install.sh update       # update only
install.sh uninstall    # remove
install.sh tailscale    # retrofit Tailscale access onto an existing install

Automation and CI: with no terminal attached, any step that would change the system aborts with instructions instead of running silently. Set CODEMAN_NONINTERACTIVE=1 to approve those steps. CODEMAN_TAILSCALE=1 preselects the Tailscale answer, and never installs Tailscale itself non-interactively.

Route B: npm

npm install -g aicodeman
codeman web

The npm package is named aicodeman; the product is Codeman. Both codeman and aicodeman are installed as commands.

The trade-off against Route A: no guided network setup, and the in-app self-updater does not apply. npm installs report as non-updatable in App Settings → System → Updates, and you update with npm update -g aicodeman.

Route C: git clone

For contributing, or for running unreleased code.

git clone https://github.com/Ark0N/Codeman.git
cd Codeman
npm install            # postinstall builds the vendored xterm addon bundles
npm run dev            # dev server on http://localhost:3000

For a production run from a clone:

npm run build
npm run start

npm run dev runs TypeScript directly through tsx with no build step. The frontend is plain JavaScript served from src/web/public/ with no bundler, so editing a .js or .css file and reloading the page is enough. The one exception is index.html, which is read once at server start, so markup changes need a restart.

See Contributing for the rest of the development loop.

Installing an agent CLI

Codeman drives CLIs, it does not bundle them. Install at least one:

CLI	Install	Notes
Claude Code	npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code	The primary target. Some Codeman features are Claude-only: see Agent CLIs.
OpenCode	See opencode.ai
Codex	See developers.openai.com/codex/cli
Antigravity	See antigravity.google	Google's successor to the consumer Gemini CLI.
Gemini CLI	See github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli	Enterprise only since Google's June 2026 consumer cutover.
Pi	See pi.dev	No permission prompts and no sandbox by design. Read Agent CLIs before using it on a repo you care about.

Log each CLI in once, by hand, before pointing Codeman at it. Codeman never collects or stores your CLI credentials.

Verify the install

codeman doctor          # checks Node, tmux, the agent CLIs, document converters
codeman --version
codeman web             # then open http://localhost:3000

codeman doctor --json gives machine-readable output, and --category core narrows it to the things a session cannot start without.

If the dashboard loads and + New Session opens, you are done. Continue to Quick Start.

Where things live

Path	What
~/.codeman/app	The installed code (installer route only).
~/.codeman/	All state: state.json, settings, session history, push keys, TLS certs. See Core Concepts.
~/codeman-cases/	Cases created from scratch. Linked cases stay wherever they already are.
~/.codeman/web.log	Log for a detached (-d) server.

Everything is under your home directory, and nothing needs root.

Keeping it running

A bare codeman web dies with the shell that started it. Two ways to outlive that:

codeman web -d          # detached; --status and --stop manage it
codeman service install # systemd user unit or macOS LaunchAgent; survives reboots

Full detail, including logs and the self-updater, is in Running As A Service.

Updating

Install route	How to update
Installer	Re-run the one-liner, or App Settings → System → Updates in the UI.
npm	npm update -g aicodeman
git clone	git pull && npm install && npm run build, then restart.

The in-app updater covers git-clone installs supervised by systemd or launchd. It restarts the process that is running it, so the actual work happens in a detached script and the browser polls across the restart. Progress appears in the UI.

Uninstalling

install.sh uninstall            # installer route
npm uninstall -g aicodeman      # npm route

Neither removes ~/.codeman/ or ~/codeman-cases/. Delete those by hand if you want the state and your case folders gone as well, and check ~/codeman-cases/ first: linked cases point at directories you already had, but cases created from scratch have their only copy there.

Running tmux sessions are not killed by an uninstall. tmux -L codeman kill-server ends them.

Windows (WSL)

wsl bash -c "curl -fsSL https://getcodeman.com/install | bash"

Codeman requires tmux, so Windows runs it inside WSL2. If you do not have WSL yet: run wsl --install in an admin PowerShell, reboot, open Ubuntu, and install your agent CLI inside WSL. http://localhost:3000 then works from your Windows browser.

Work inside the Linux filesystem (~/project), not /mnt/c/.... Filesystem watching and git are both dramatically slower across the Windows mount, and agents notice.

macOS notes

Error: posix_spawnp failed. on every session start. node-pty publishes its macOS spawn-helper without the executable bit, and macOS launches every PTY through it. Codeman detects this and repairs it automatically on the first failure. If you hit it on a clone install and want to fix it by hand:

npm run fix:node-pty

This is a chmod, not a rebuild. Look in prebuilds/darwin-<arch>/, not build/Release/, which does not exist on macOS. Linux cannot reproduce this.

launchd and PATH. A LaunchAgent gets /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin, which finds neither a Homebrew or nvm node nor tmux or claude. codeman service install bakes your current PATH into the unit for exactly this reason, so prefer it over a hand-written plist.

Gotchas

• tmux: command not found after a successful install. The installer asks before installing packages, and a declined prompt is a valid answer it remembers. Install tmux and re-run.
• Port 3000 in use. codeman web --port 8080, or set CODEMAN_PORT.
• Two Codemans on one machine. The data directory and the tmux socket are both process wide, so a second instance discovers and attaches the first one's live sessions. Give each a distinct CODEMAN_INSTANCE before starting a second. See Core Concepts.
• The dashboard is not reachable from your phone. That is the default, not a fault. The server binds 127.0.0.1. See Remote Access.

Read next

• Quick Start - your first working session.
• Agent CLIs - picking and setting up a run mode.
• Remote Access - reaching it from another device.
• Troubleshooting - when the above did not go as written.