Install

Works with the CLI alone. No gander.md account.

You need the gander binary on your PATH. After that, most authors sign up and watch a file. Reviewers skip this page entirely: they open the link you send. See the share viewer.

The recommended install is the one-liner from https://release.gander.md. That origin is a DigitalOcean Spaces mirror of GitHub Release assets, checksums, install.sh, and latest.json. The script detects your OS and architecture, verifies the SHA256 sidecar, installs the binary, then runs gander skill and gander mcp install so agent harnesses pick up the skill and the comment round-trip.

curl -fsSL https://release.gander.md/install.sh | bash
gander signup --email [email protected]
gander watch plan.md

If the mirror is unreachable, the same script falls back to GitHub Releases, then to cloning the repo and building from source (when Go is available). Post-steps still run against whatever binary landed. A failing skill or MCP post-step prints a warning and still exits 0: the binary install already succeeded.

This is the block on the homepage and on /with/{tool}. Homebrew, pinning a version, and binary-only installs are below.

What each installer does

Pick one. They are not equivalent.

Supported platforms are macOS and Linux, amd64 and arm64. Go is required only for a source build or the source fallback.

Recommended one-liner

curl -fsSL https://release.gander.md/install.sh | bash

The binary goes to ~/go/bin/gander, or /usr/local/bin/gander if ~/go/bin is missing or not writable. Put that directory on your PATH if gander is not found afterward.

Flags

When you pipe the script, put flags after -- so bash does not eat them:

curl -fsSL https://release.gander.md/install.sh | bash -s -- --no-skill --no-mcp

--no-skill and --no-mcp together are a binary-only install. That is useful in CI, or when you will wire skill and MCP yourself.

Override the download origin with GANDER_DOWNLOAD_BASE (default https://release.gander.md). The installer needs curl. It needs git only for the source fallback.

After the one-liner, continue with Signup. The skill and MCP pages explain what those post-steps actually installed: Skill, MCP. The CLI keeps the token and share map in config.json.

Homebrew (alternate)

Use Homebrew if you want the formula, man page, and shell completions from brew, and you are fine running skill and MCP yourself. The formula still downloads GitHub Release assets. It does not run the post-steps.

brew tap gandermd/gander
brew install gander
gander skill
gander signup --email [email protected]
gander mcp install

Upgrade the formula with brew upgrade. gander --upgrade still works for an in-place binary replace, including after a Homebrew install.

GitHub copy of the script

Same installer as the CDN, fetched from the repo. Use this if you already trust GitHub raw and do not want the script itself to come from Spaces. Downloads inside the script still prefer release.gander.md unless you set GANDER_DOWNLOAD_BASE.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gandermd/gander-cli/main/install.sh | bash

Flags work the same way:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gandermd/gander-cli/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --version v0.2.1

Clone and run

Read install.sh on disk, then run it. Useful when curl | bash makes you nervous.

git clone https://github.com/gandermd/gander-cli.git
cd gander-cli
./install.sh
./install.sh --dry-run
./install.sh --no-skill --no-mcp

Build from source

For a platform without a release asset, or when you are changing the CLI:

git clone https://github.com/gandermd/gander-cli.git
cd gander-cli
go mod tidy
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -trimpath -ldflags "-X main.Version=v0.2.1" -o gander .
mv gander ~/go/bin/gander

Stamp main.Version so gander --upgrade knows what you are running. Drop the ldflag and the binary reports dev, which still runs, but the first --upgrade will replace it even if you are already current. After a source build, install the skill and MCP yourself if you want them.

Upgrade

gander --upgrade

Downloads the latest matching gander-{os}-{arch} from https://release.gander.md, verifies the .sha256 sidecar, shuts the runner down over its socket, replaces the binary, and lets the supervisor (or a fresh spawn) bring watches back. If the mirror is down, it uses the GitHub Releases API. If ~/.gander/skill is already installed, the same command refreshes it and re-links agent dests.

If you built by hand and --upgrade has nothing useful to do, re-run install.sh or ./install.sh --source.

Uninstall

gander uninstall
gander uninstall --yes --keep-config
brew uninstall gander

gander uninstall is interactive unless you pass --yes. It stops the runner, removes the login supervisor, strips the gander MCP entries it wrote, removes skill symlinks and ~/.gander/skill, and deletes ~/.gander unless you pass --keep-config. That directory is config.json plus watches, the runner socket, logs, and the skill. A Homebrew-managed binary is left in place with a hint to run brew uninstall gander. Run uninstall first, then brew, if you installed both ways over time.

Completions and man page

source <(gander completion bash)
eval "$(gander completion zsh)"

Homebrew installs bash and zsh completions under $(brew --prefix)/share/... and gander(1) under man1. Release assets also ship gander-completions.tar.gz and gander-man.tar.gz if you installed the raw binary.

tar -xzf gander-man.tar.gz -C /usr/local/share/man/man1
man gander