istok

Installation

Install, verify, update and remove the istok binary, or build it from source.

This page covers every way to install Istok, how to check it works, and how to update or remove it. If you just want to get started, the one-line installer from the Quick start is enough.

Istok is a single binary. It contains the CLI, the MCP server for your agent and the web UI. Releases exist for Linux (x86-64, ARM64) and macOS (Intel, Apple Silicon). Windows is not supported yet.

Install with the script

curl -fsSL https://get.istok.sh | sh

The script detects your system and architecture, downloads the matching release, checks it against the release’s SHA-256 checksums and installs istok into ~/.local/bin. It does not need sudo.

To read the script before running it:

curl -fsSL https://get.istok.sh -o install-istok.sh
sh install-istok.sh

Installer options

Pass options after sh -s --:

# Install somewhere else (the directory must be on your PATH)
curl -fsSL https://get.istok.sh | sh -s -- --install-dir "$HOME/bin"

# Install a specific release
curl -fsSL https://get.istok.sh | sh -s -- --version v0.2.0

# Show what would happen without changing anything
curl -fsSL https://get.istok.sh | sh -s -- --dry-run

ISTOK_INSTALL_DIR and ISTOK_VERSION have the same effect as --install-dir and --version.

Install manually

Download the archive for your system from GitHub Releases, then:

tar -xzf istok_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
install -m 0755 istok "$HOME/.local/bin/istok"

Check the installation

istok version
istok --help

If your shell cannot find istok, the install directory is not on your PATH.

Update

istok update

Istok shows the current and new version with release notes and asks before installing. --check only checks; --yes skips the question. Releases are signed and the signature is verified before the binary is replaced. See Updates and the UI service for what happens during an update.

Uninstall

  1. If you run the web UI as a service, remove it first: istok ui service uninstall.
  2. Remove the Istok MCP server from your agent’s configuration, for example claude mcp remove istok.
  3. Delete the binary: rm ~/.local/bin/istok (or the directory you installed to).

Your data stays where it is. To remove it too, delete the Istok data directory: ~/.local/share/istok on Linux (or $XDG_DATA_HOME/istok), ~/Library/Application Support/istok on macOS. It holds the database, the code indexes and run artifacts, unless you moved them with ISTOK_DATABASE or ISTOK_INDEX_ROOT. Deleting it removes all projects, tasks, runs and knowledge, and cannot be undone. Your repositories are not affected.

Build from source

You need Go with cgo enabled (Istok uses SQLite) and pnpm, because the web UI is built and embedded into the binary.

git clone https://github.com/vtimame/istok.sh.git
cd istok.sh
make install

make install builds the UI and installs istok into ~/.local/bin. Use make build to build into bin/ instead.

A binary built from source cannot update itself. istok update says so and explains how to install an official release.