Get Ferrow.
Node 20 is the only requirement, and no account is needed to install or run it — a free account is there if you want one. The terminal route is the product; the desktop builds wrap the same code in a window. Every file on this page is listed with its sha256 — a checksum, the string a file produces that proves it arrived intact.
Never used a terminal on purpose? Start with the five-minute walkthrough. It begins with the same line as this page and shows every screen Ferrow prints back, so you can tell whether it worked — then come back here for the desktop builds if you want a window.
The one line
Any machine with Node 20.
This installs the ferrow command globally, from the npm registry.
macOS, Windows and Linux, the same line on each.
npm install -g @ferrow/ferrowThe name is scoped — @ferrow/ferrow — because npm reserves
bare names that look like existing packages. The command it installs is still just
ferrow. Prefer a file you can check first? The same thing ships as
a tarball — a single downloadable archive —
with its sha256 published below, and
npm install -g https://ferrow.ai/dl/ferrow.tgz installs it identically.
Node is the free program Ferrow runs on, and this line
needs it first. If the terminal answers command not found, install Node
from nodejs.org — the button marked LTS — then run
the line again.
Then run it on its own. It tells you what is connected and what is next:
ferrowThen, in order:
ferrow detect
ferrow vault init
ferrow note inbox/today.md "the thing I just learned"ferrow detect looks for a model already running on this
machine — Ollama, LM Studio, Jan, llama.cpp, vLLM or GPT4All. If it answers
“No local model runtimes detected”, nothing is broken: it means there is
none running, and the next line is ferrow connect openai, which asks for a
provider key and tells you where to get one.
Bought Ferrow on the website? One more line switches this
machine on — ferrow activate <your key>, using the key from the page you
landed on after paying. It also takes the cs_ checkout reference or that
page's whole address.
Every screen these lines print back is shown in the five-minute walkthrough, so you can tell whether each one worked.
Terminal-first
Bring your own agent.
The ferrow command is not a companion to the app. It is the
product, headless — the same program with no window — the vault, the memory,
the skills, the capability contracts, the change log, the schedules, the kill switch. Everything the desktop app can do starts here, and a
few things only live here.
So if you already work inside Claude Code or another terminal agent, you do not have to switch to anything. Two ways to use that:
1. Let your agent do the setup. Ferrow ships a setup contract: one prompt you paste into your own agent, where every step carries the command, the output that means it worked, and what to do when it does not. It stops and asks you before anything that needs a key, and it never turns on writes by itself.
ferrow helpferrow help lists every verb, with what each one costs you.
The prompt to paste is SETUP-VIA-AGENT.md,
published right here. It is a text block, not a script: you can read the whole thing
before your agent runs a line of it. Stuck anyway? The support page
answers by email.
2. Make Ferrow your agent's memory. Ferrow speaks MCP
— the open standard agents use to reach outside tools — in both directions. It can call other people's servers, and it can be one: point your agent
at ferrow serve-mcp and your vault becomes searchable and readable from
inside the tool you already use.
claude mcp add ferrow -- ferrow serve-mcp
ferrow serve-mcp --checkThe first line is the Claude Code form; the second prints what would be
exposed without serving anything. Any MCP client works, not only that one:
{"mcpServers":{"ferrow":{"command":"ferrow","args":["serve-mcp"]}}}
Reading and searching your notes and your memory are on. Writing, and running your
skills, are off until you say otherwise in
~/.ferrow/serve-mcp.json, and a refusal names that file and the one line
that changes it. When you do turn writing on, every write goes through the change log
attributed to the client that made it, so ferrow log shows it and
ferrow log revert undoes it. A skill run this way stays inside its own
capability contract: reaching Ferrow over MCP grants nothing that running it yourself
would not.
Desktop builds
A window instead of a prompt.
These are pre-1.0, and the signing is nearly done. Both macOS images are signed
(Developer ID Application: Christopher Ruzylo) and notarized by
Apple, so they open like any other app — no warning to click through. The Windows
installer still carries no signature and SmartScreen will warn; a Windows certificate is
bought and installed by a human, and that has not happened yet. If clicking through a
warning is not something you want to do on Windows, use the terminal route above, which
has nothing to sign.
These are the 0.1.21 builds, and they come from dl.ferrow.ai rather than from
this site: the engine ships inside them now, which puts each one between 21MB and 114MB, and
the host this site runs on refuses any file over 25MB. Same company, same edge, no size
limit. Every address carries its version, so the file at one URL never changes under you.
e5f5c669549fe4b86395fac7c915d53a7f5d806f880d4c440b014ecb63562d4bFerrow_0.1.21_x64.dmg — Intel Macs, v0.1.21, 34.9MB, notarized.
43bbe3e4626dc89028c8bc4d8ce37b60154b0a99d410fa253d796e486a4d6fae2733985a66b262dc2e5073203fb668a506a0bbc19206a1283fb21eedac83cfb577520af5d943b7d66235a9965ef5ae3a0c67ce734a724ad2eeabc2717e3eed59Prefer an AppImage? Ferrow_0.1.21_amd64.AppImage — v0.1.21, 113.9MB,
57aafce21d86238f8e0b19e74bb5c1e11eb5891f88459db905e09aaea90753b2.@ferrow/ferrow 0.1.22 was published from — the two are the same code
today. Between releases this file moves first, because it is repacked with the site.
CI stamps
ferrow.tgz.sha256 beside it on every repack.dc4114b4938dc22e98d7c1a6f0c2757e371c83059b095f2ef06b1aa04ba1bd53Check any of them before you open it:
shasum -a 256 Ferrow_0.1.21_aarch64.dmg
certutil -hashfile Ferrow_0.1.21_x64-setup.exe SHA256The first line is macOS and Linux, the second is Windows. Each prints one long string of letters and numbers. It must match the one printed beside that file above, character for character — if it does, the file you have is the file we built.
No install at all
Use it in the browser.
The web client at app.ferrow.ai is the same interface
with nothing to download. It holds no vault of its own: you pair it with a hub you are
running (ferrow hub start), and it reaches that machine through a relay that
carries sealed blobs it cannot read. Your notes stay where they already are.
If you are trying Ferrow for the first time, the one line at the top of this page is the shortest path to a working vault. The browser client is worth it once you want the same vault from a machine that is not yours.
Phones
Not yet, honestly.
In the meantime app.ferrow.ai works in a phone browser against your own hub.
Next
Once it is installed.
The walkthrough shows every screen Ferrow prints back, so you can tell whether each step worked. On your own machine and your own keys it is free; pricing is what Ferrow's own side of it costs.