seamless docs

Install & deploy

The one-command install and every other route to the same place - Homebrew, a clone, go install - plus the override knobs and the security posture you are accepting.

Steps for

On this page

Installing Seamless is one command: a script downloads a release archive containing the seamlessd daemon and seam CLI for macOS, Linux, or Windows, verifies its SHA-256, and registers the daemon as a per-user service - launchd, systemd, or a Scheduled Task - bound to loopback. No Docker, database server, or Go toolchain. The Quickstart runs that command and moves on; this page is what it did, and what to do when you want to steer it yourself. Where everything lands - the service, logs, ports, and every path - is on The service & where things live.

Install in one command

macOSLinux

curl -fsSL https://thereisnospoon.org/install | sh

Windows

The PowerShell installer does the same steps with a Scheduled Task in place of launchd/systemd:

irm https://thereisnospoon.org/install.ps1 | iex

This is the path for using Seamless (as opposed to working on it). The POSIX script needs curl and tar; the PowerShell one needs nothing beyond Windows itself. No Go toolchain is involved. In order, it:

  1. resolves the latest release and downloads the archive for your platform (macOS, Linux, and Windows; amd64 and arm64), verifying its SHA-256 against the release's checksums.txt before unpacking anything; when cosign is available it also verifies that manifest's keyless signature against this repository's release workflow identity;
  2. installs seamlessd and seam into ~/.local/bin;
  3. runs seamlessd install-hooks, which generates the bearer key into ~/.config/seamless/seamless.yaml on first run, detects Claude Code, the Claude app chat surface, and Codex, and installs that set's hooks, MCP registrations, and skills;
  4. installs and starts the per-user service - launchd on macOS, systemd --user on Linux, an at-logon Scheduled Task on Windows - and polls /healthz until the daemon actually answers.

Step 3 detects three install targets - Claude Code, the Claude app chat surface (claude-desktop, the app's mcpServers bridge; it has no hooks or skills), and Codex - and wires the detected set. That one selection drives hooks, MCP registrations, and the maintained skills together - seam-onboard always, seam-research only while its optional feature is on. On a terminal the run confirms the selection with a multi-select menu - answers are numbers or names, comma-separated (1,3), defaulting to the detected set; headless, the detected set is wired as-is. With nothing detected, a run on a terminal warns and asks whether to install at all (defaulting to no), and a headless run aborts - the installer never silently wires a client that is not there. Set SEAMLESS_CLIENT to make the choice explicit: one target, a comma list, or all (every target the platform can host - the chat surface exists only where the Claude app runs, so all never fails on Linux over it). See Codex local setup for the shared app/CLI/IDE profile and Codex's trust gate, and Claude app chat setup for what the chat surface does and does not get.

On every OS, Claude's copies live under $HOME/.claude/skills; Codex's live under $CODEX_HOME/skills when set, otherwise $HOME/.codex/skills (the same paths are %USERPROFILE%-relative on Windows). Invoke /seam-onboard in Claude Code or $seam-onboard in Codex. The skill asks before adding its marked block to global/project CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md; it never silently edits either.

Windows

The Windows installer is per-user by the same principle as the others: it runs as you, never elevates, and registers the Scheduled Task under your own account (LogonType Interactive), so a single signed-in user is all it needs and no administrator prompt ever appears. ~/.config/seamless and ~/.seamless resolve under %USERPROFILE%, exactly the paths the daemon already searches.

Re-running it upgrades in place: binaries are swapped by rename (safe while the daemon holds them open), the service restarts on the new build, and your config and ~/.seamless are preserved. The selected clients are reconciled to those new stable paths: owned stale hooks and the Codex stdio registration are repaired, current definitions are untouched, foreign hooks are preserved, and the recurring skill is refreshed. It is one shell script with no dependencies to audit.

Override Effect
SEAMLESS_VERSION=0.3.0 install that version instead of the latest
SEAMLESS_INSTALL_DIR=~/bin put the binaries somewhere else
SEAMLESS_CLIENT=claude|claude-desktop|codex|all choose which target(s) to wire instead of auto-detection; comma lists work (claude,claude-desktop)
SEAMLESS_NO_HOOKS=1 skip agent hooks, MCP registration, and skills
SEAMLESS_NO_ONBOARD_SKILL=1 skip the selected client(s)' one-shot onboarding skill
SEAMLESS_NO_RESEARCH_SKILL=1 skip the selected client(s)' recurring research skill
SEAMLESS_NO_SERVICE=1 install the binaries only; run seamlessd serve yourself
SEAMLESS_ALLOW_ROOT=1 permit running as root (single-user containers)

macOSLinux

Set them ahead of the shell, not the curl: curl -fsSL https://thereisnospoon.org/install | SEAMLESS_VERSION=0.3.0 sh.

Windows

The same knobs are environment variables you set before the pipe - $env:SEAMLESS_VERSION='0.3.0'; irm https://thereisnospoon.org/install.ps1 | iex

  • with the one exception of SEAMLESS_ALLOW_ROOT, which is POSIX-only (the Windows task is per-user by construction, so there is no root case to allow).

Everything here is per-user by construction - ~/.local/bin, ~/.config, ~/.seamless, a user service - so run it as yourself. Under curl | sudo sh it would all land in root's home where your agents will never look, which is why the script refuses root unless you insist.

Installing without the one-liner

The other routes end up in the same place with more of the steps left to you.

Homebrew

brew install 0spoon/tap/seamless

Every release publishes a cask to the 0spoon/homebrew-tap tap, on macOS and Linux alike. It delivers the binaries only - seamlessd and seam on your PATH, with the Gatekeeper quarantine attribute stripped on macOS (the release binaries are unsigned). It does not wire clients or register a service, so finish with the two commands the cask's caveats print:

seamlessd install-hooks   # bearer key on first run, hooks, MCP, skills
seamlessd serve           # or set up the service yourself

brew upgrade moves you to the latest release. The hooks keep working - they resolve seam through brew's stable bin path - but restart the daemon yourself so it runs the new build.

From a clone

make install                    # -> ~/.local/bin + ~/.config/seamless/seamless.yaml
make install PREFIX=/opt/seam   # custom prefix (binaries land in $PREFIX/bin)
make uninstall                  # remove service, hooks, MCP, skills + binaries (data kept)

make install is the same destination from your own build, and it is macOS-only (it renders the launchd plist from deploy/launchd/). It snapshots the binaries and config to stable locations, then points launchd and the selected clients' hooks/MCP definitions at the copies. Nothing live resolves through your working tree, so make build, a branch switch, and a moved or cleaned repo cannot change what the running daemon and every agent's hooks execute. Swapping them is make install, deliberately - Contributing covers using it as the edit-test loop.

The config lands in ~/.config/seamless/, one of the paths Seamless already searches ahead of ./seamless.yaml, so the hooks resolve it from any directory. It is seeded only when absent - an install never clobbers a config holding your bearer key. Delete it to re-seed.

Go install and release archives

The remaining routes end up in the same place with less done for you: go install github.com/0spoon/seamless/cmd/...@latest needs Go 1.25+, and the GitHub releases carry the same prebuilt archives the installer fetches. From a bare binary, seamlessd serve covers the essentials - first run seeds the config - and seamlessd install-hooks wires the detected Claude Code/Codex clients; what you take on yourself is the service.

The service

The installer registered seamlessd as a per-user service - launchd on macOS, systemd --user on Linux, an at-logon Scheduled Task on Windows - and seamlessd start|stop|restart|status controls it the same way everywhere. The native commands, log locations, and every path Seamless touches are on The service & where things live.

Upgrading

seamlessd update upgrades in place to the latest release, on every OS. Update & uninstall has the full procedure, the pinning knobs, and how the fetched installer is signature-verified before it runs.

Uninstalling

seamlessd uninstall reverses the whole install and keeps your knowledge by default. See Update & uninstall.

Security posture

What you are accepting when you run this:

  • One static bearer key guards /api/mcp and the console. Not JWT, not OAuth, no user accounts. It is a single-user local tool and the key is in your config file with 0600 permissions.
  • Default agent registrations do not copy that key. Claude Code calls seam mcp-headers through headersHelper; Codex launches seam mcp-proxy. Both read the 0600 Seamless config at connection time, and neither puts the bearer value in client config or subprocess argv. A manual Codex direct-HTTP registration with http_headers does copy it into config.toml; use that tradeoff deliberately.
  • Loopback bind by default (127.0.0.1:8081). Nothing off your machine can reach it.
  • SSRF guards on capture. capture_url is the one tool that makes an outbound request on an agent's behalf, and its destination ports are restricted to capture.allowed_ports (80 and 443 by default) - never "any port".
  • No product telemetry. Seamless sends no usage or analytics data. The outbound traffic is: calls to a configured OpenAI or Anthropic provider (use Ollama to keep model calls local), URLs an agent explicitly asks capture_url to fetch, and the GitHub release check and download that an explicit seamlessd update performs.
  • Release authenticity has two layers. Every installer verifies the archive's SHA-256 against checksums.txt. When cosign is installed it also verifies the manifest's keyless signature against this repository's release workflow identity; without cosign it warns clearly and continues with checksum integrity only. seamlessd update separately verifies the fetched installer script's Sigstore bundle in-process before executing it. curl | sh still means trusting the bytes served by the site, so read the script first if that boundary is not acceptable; go install lands in the same place.

The key and loopback are a matched pair. A static bearer key is adequate because the listener is on loopback; it would not be adequate on a public interface. If you widen addr to a routable address, the key becomes the only thing between the internet and your entire knowledge store - so don't. Put it behind a tunnel (Tailscale, SSH forwarding, Cloudflare Tunnel) and leave the bind on loopback.

See Configuration for every key.