Installation

Get Irrlicht running on your Mac in under two minutes via the package installer, or build everything from source.

Prerequisites

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later — Irrlicht uses SwiftUI APIs that require Ventura as a minimum.
• At least one supported AI coding agent installed and working:
  • Claude Code
  • OpenAI Codex CLI

If you plan to build from source, you will also need:

• Go 1.21+ — the daemon is written in Go
• Swift 5.9+ — the menu-bar app is a native SwiftUI application
• Xcode Command Line Tools — install with xcode-select --install

Install via DMG (Recommended)

The fastest path. A single app bundle with everything included.

1. Download the DMG

   Grab Irrlicht-<version>.dmg from the GitHub Releases page.

2. Install the app

   Open the DMG and drag Irrlicht.app to Applications. You may need to approve the app in System Settings → Privacy & Security if Gatekeeper blocks it.

3. What gets installed

   Component	Location
   Irrlicht.app (menu-bar app + embedded daemon)	/Applications/Irrlicht.app

   The daemon (irrlichd) is embedded inside the app bundle and managed automatically. No separate services or LaunchAgents needed.

4. Launch the app

   Open Irrlicht from Applications. A sparkle icon appears in the menu bar, and the daemon starts automatically in the background.

Build from Source

Building from source gives you the full installer package, identical to the release download.

One-command build

git clone https://github.com/anthropics/irrlicht.git
cd irrlicht
./platforms/build-release.sh

The script produces a .dmg (and optionally a .pkg) in the build directory.

What the build script does

Under the hood, build-release.sh performs these steps in order:

1. Syncs the web frontend — embeds the latest HTML/CSS/JS assets into the daemon binary.
2. Cross-compiles the daemon — builds irrlichd for both arm64 (Apple Silicon) and amd64 (Intel).
3. Creates a universal binary — merges both architectures with lipo so one binary runs natively on any Mac.
4. Builds the Swift menu-bar app — compiles Irrlicht.app from the SwiftUI source.
5. Embeds the daemon — places the universal irrlichd binary inside Irrlicht.app/Contents/MacOS/.
6. Packages into DMG and installer — creates a .dmg for drag-and-drop install and a .pkg installer.

Manual build (individual components)

If you prefer to build each component separately for development:

Daemon only

cd core && go build ./cmd/irrlichd/

Menu-bar app only

cd platforms/macos && swift build

Post-Installation

Once installed (via either method), Irrlicht is ready to go.

• The app manages everything — the embedded daemon starts automatically when the app launches. No separate services or LaunchAgents needed.
• The menu-bar app appears in your menu bar as a sparkle icon. Click it to see the current state of all detected AI agent sessions.

Verify the daemon is running

curl http://127.0.0.1:7837/state

A successful response returns a JSON object with the current global state. If the daemon is not running, verify the app is launched and check logs.

Check logs

Daemon logs are written to:

~/Library/Application Support/Irrlicht/logs/

Inspect these if the daemon fails to start or you encounter unexpected behaviour.

Uninstalling

To remove Irrlicht completely, quit the app and delete the following:

# Remove the app
rm -rf /Applications/Irrlicht.app

# Remove application data and logs
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Irrlicht/