Install

Three install paths, in order of effort: the one-liner, manual per-component, or building from source.

The one-liner

The fastest install. Detects your platform, fetches the right build from GitHub Releases, and registers the MCP server with any Claude Code or OpenClaw install it finds.

# Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://kept.work/install.ps1 | iex

Flags

# Install only specific components (skip the TUI)
curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash -s -- --components app,cli,mcp

# Build everything from source instead of fetching binaries
curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash -s -- --from-source

# Pin a specific release
curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash -s -- --version v0.3.1

# Linux: prefer .deb or .AppImage explicitly
curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash -s -- --linux-package deb

Environment variables (KEPT_BIN_DIR, KEPT_APP_DIR, KEPT_VERSION, etc.) are also supported. See scripts/install.sh in the repo for the full list.

Per-component manual install

Desktop app

Download the build for your platform from the GitHub releases page. Run the installer.

Platform	Artifact
macOS	`Kept_<version>_aarch64.dmg` (Apple Silicon) or `Kept_<version>_x64.dmg` (Intel)
Windows	`Kept_<version>_x64-setup.exe` (NSIS installer)
Linux	`Kept_<version>_amd64.deb` or `Kept_<version>_amd64.AppImage`

CLI

The CLI (kept) is a headless companion — useful if you want to capture chats without running the desktop app.

# From a release binary
curl -fsSL https://github.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/releases/latest/download/kept-cli-x86_64-linux > ~/.local/bin/kept
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/kept

# From source
git clone https://github.com/egroup-labs/kept.git
cd kept.work/cli
cargo install --path .

The binary is small (single static binary, ~5MB) and ships under MIT.

MCP server

The MCP server (kept-vault-server) is a TypeScript package. The dedicated installer registers it with any MCP clients you have:

curl -fsSL https://kept.work/scripts/install-kept-mcp.sh | bash

Flags: --claudecode, --openclaw, --no-build, --dir <path>. See MCP server for details on what gets registered and where.

To install manually:

git clone https://github.com/egroup-labs/kept.git
cd kept.work/mcp
npm install
npm run build
# Then register the resulting bin/kept-vault-server.js with your MCP client

Browser extension

Bundled with the desktop app — Kept exposes a "Open extension folder" command that drops the extension files where you can sideload them. To get the extension without the desktop app, clone the repo and use kept.work/extension/ directly:

git clone https://github.com/egroup-labs/kept.git
# Then load unpacked from kept.work/extension in chrome://extensions

Build from source

The whole repo:

git clone https://github.com/egroup-labs/kept.git
cd kept.work

Component	Build commands
Desktop app	`cd app && npm install && npm run tauri build`
CLI	`cd cli && cargo build --release`
MCP server	`cd mcp && npm install && npm run build`
Extension	already plain JS, load `extension/` unpacked

For Linux, a reproducible Docker build is available:

cd app
./scripts/docker-build.sh
# Outputs .deb + .AppImage to dist-packages/

Verify

After install:

# Desktop app
which kept-desktop  # or check Applications / Start menu
# CLI
kept --version
# MCP server
which kept-vault-server  # or: which claude && claude mcp list | grep kept-vault