Installation

The installer downloads two binaries: the vibekit CLI and the vibekit-tui Explorer sidecar. The Explorer is not optional — vibekit explore resolves the sidecar as a sibling of the CLI binary, so both land in the same directory.

There is no stable release yet, so every install below sets the alpha channel. Once 1.0.0 ships you can drop it.

Requirements

The CLI and the Explorer are self-contained binaries — nothing else is needed to install them or to read the chain. Signing and building do have prerequisites.

For	You need
Browsing the chain — queries, the Explorer, `vibekit new`	Nothing
Signing anything — payments, assets, deploys	Node.js, plus `npm` once
Building a project — compiling and testing contracts	Node.js 24+
LocalNet	Docker Compose v2
The keystore, on Linux	A Secret Service keychain
The keystore, on Windows	Visual C++ Redistributable (`winget install Microsoft.VCRedist.2015+.x64`)

Signing needs Node because the keystore daemon is a Node program; vibekit keystore provisions the pinned @algorandfoundation/keystore-node with npm the first time. Building needs it because the starter templates declare engines: node >=24 and run puya-ts, tsx, and vitest.

vibekit doctor reports what is missing without changing anything.

macOS and Linux

curl -fsSL https://getvibekit.ai/alpha | sh

/alpha is the same script as /install with the channel pre-set, so the one-liner stays short. The explicit form is equivalent:

curl -fsSL https://getvibekit.ai/install | VIBEKIT_CHANNEL=alpha sh

Installs to ~/.local/bin. If that is not on your PATH, the installer prints the line to add for your shell.

Windows

irm https://getvibekit.ai/alpha.ps1 | iex

/alpha.ps1 is /install.ps1 with the channel pre-set. The explicit form is equivalent:

$env:VIBEKIT_CHANNEL = "alpha"; irm https://getvibekit.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Installs to ~\.vibekit\bin and adds that directory to your user PATH automatically. Restart your terminal for the change to take effect.

Installer options

Both installers read the same environment variables.

Variable	Meaning
`VIBEKIT_VERSION`	Install a specific tag, e.g. `v1.0.0-alpha.2`
`VIBEKIT_CHANNEL`	`stable` (default), `alpha`, or `beta`
`VIBEKIT_INSTALL_DIR`	Override the install directory
`VIBEKIT_FORCE_INSTALL`	Replace an existing install without prompting

Upgrading over an existing install prompts for confirmation. When you are piping the installer into a shell with no terminal attached — CI, a container, a provisioning script — set VIBEKIT_FORCE_INSTALL=1 so it does not try to prompt.

A specific version, on either platform:

curl -fsSL https://getvibekit.ai/install | VIBEKIT_VERSION=v1.0.0-alpha.2 sh

$env:VIBEKIT_VERSION = "v1.0.0-alpha.2"; irm https://getvibekit.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Manual install

Download both binaries for your platform from GitHub Releases, put them in the same directory on your PATH, and rename them to vibekit and vibekit-tui (.exe on Windows). On macOS and Linux, chmod +x both.

Verify

vibekit --version
vibekit doctor

doctor reports what is missing — Docker for LocalNet, the keystore daemon for signing — without changing anything. vibekit doctor --fix is the opt-in repair path.

Run from a source checkout

You do not need the released binaries to work on VibeKit itself. From a clone, with Bun 1.4 or newer:

bun install
bun run cli -- --help

For example, scaffold a project with:

bun run cli -- new my-algorand-app --template contracts

The Explorer is a separate terminal application. Start it from the repository root:

bun run tui

bun run cli -- explore also works; set VIBEKIT_EXPLORE to point it at a specific TUI entry.