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Monad installs as a single binary on macOS, Linux, and Windows and runs as one local daemon. The release installer downloads the matching archive and installs monad. The CLI and Web UI use the same built-in verified upgrade flow. This guide covers system requirements, the release installer, manual installation, upgrades, and removal. Use getting started after installation to connect a model and run your first session.

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Check system requirements

Monad publishes self-contained releases for these platforms: You need outbound HTTPS access to your chosen model provider. Monad does not bundle a local inference engine.

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Install a release

Run the installer for your platform. It selects the release archive, installs Monad under ~/.monad/bin, and updates PATH. On macOS or Linux:
If curl is unavailable, use:
On Windows PowerShell 5.1 or later:
In an interactive terminal, a successful install starts the daemon and opens the Web UI automatically. Automated, JSON, and quiet installs only install the binaries; run monad up afterwards when you are ready to start Monad. The interactive installer shows download size, speed, and ETA when terminal width permits. For automation, set MONAD_OUTPUT=json to emit newline-delimited stage and summary events instead of animation. Downloads retry transient failures three times.

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Install an archive manually

Download the archive from GitHub Releases. Release names use dist target triples such as monad-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz. GitHub signs immutable releases and records every asset digest in the release attestation. For the latest immutable release on Apple Silicon macOS:
The verification command checks both the release attestation and the downloaded asset digest. The same gh command works on Windows; extract the verified archive with tar. Use the regular linux-arch build on glibc distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Use linux-arch-musl on Alpine and other musl-based distributions.

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Upgrade

Use monad update or the Web UI upgrade action. See releases and upgrading for release channels and explicit update commands.

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Remove Monad

Stop the daemon before removing installed files:
Run monad purge all only when you also want to delete local sessions, configuration, credentials, memory, and installed extensions under ~/.monad. Narrower scopes are monad purge sessions, monad purge config, and monad purge auth. Remove the monad binary from the directory reported by command -v monad. Remove the application launcher from ~/Applications/Monad.app on macOS or ~/.local/share/applications/monad.desktop on Linux. On Windows, remove the Monad directory under %APPDATA%, the Start Menu shortcut, and its PATH entry. The installer marks any shell configuration change with # Added by monad installer. Remove that marked entry if you no longer need the installed binary directory on PATH.