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User guide

Browsentic for macOS

A native app that installs Browsentic and runs it from a window. It is the same command and the same daemon as npx browsentic setup — the app carries them inside itself, lays them down in ~/.browsentic, and then drives them, so nothing here needs a terminal.

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Requires macOS 14 or newer, on Apple silicon or Intel.

Install 

curl -fsSL https://browsentic.com/install.sh | sh

That downloads the latest release, checks the app’s signature is intact, copies Browsentic.app into Applications and opens it. It asks for no password. BROWSENTIC_VERSION=0.6.0 pins a release, and BROWSENTIC_NO_OPEN=1 installs without opening. Read the script first if you like — it is sixty lines.

From the disk image instead

Download Browsentic-<version>.dmg from the latest release and drag Browsentic onto Applications. The build is not notarized yet, and macOS quarantines anything a browser downloads, so the first open is blocked with “Apple could not verify Browsentic is free of malware”. Press Done, then either open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the Browsentic line and press Open Anyway, or run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Browsentic.app

Right-click ▸ Open no longer gets past this on macOS 15 and newer. The one-line install never meets it, because curl does not quarantine what it downloads.

The first screen: what your Mac already has

The app opens on six checks and runs them on its own:

Check Passes when If it does not
This Mac always —
Node.js runtime node 20 or newer is on your PATH Install downloads the current LTS from nodejs.org into ~/.browsentic/runtime/node, verified against its published SHA-256. No Homebrew, no password
Browsentic command ~/.browsentic/cli holds the version this app carries Install copies it there and writes the browsentic launcher to ~/.browsentic/bin
Browser extension the same version is unpacked at ~/browsentic/extension/chrome-mv3 Install unpacks it
A Chromium browser Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera or Chromium is installed Get Chrome opens the download page. Advisory — it does not block you
An AI agent claude, codex or agy is on your PATH Install Claude Code runs npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code. Advisory

Set up everything installs the first three in one click. A browser and an agent are yours to choose, so each has a button of its own. When everything required is in place the app moves on by itself; on later launches that takes about two seconds.

Why the extension is not in ~/.browsentic. Chrome’s Load unpacked dialog is the system folder picker, which hides dotfolders, and a browser’s pairing is tied to the extension’s absolute path. So the extension lives in ~/browsentic/extension/chrome-mv3, exactly where the command puts it, and everything else goes in ~/.browsentic.

The window

The tabs float at the top; ⌘1–⌘7 switch between them.

Tab What you do there
Overview Turn the daemon on and off with the power button, restart it, see its address, version and whether the extension is connected and in sync. Copy the extension’s path, or open chrome://extensions in your browser with the path already on the clipboard
Browsers Get a pairing code with a live countdown, see every paired browser, unpair one or all
Agents See which of Claude Code, Codex and Antigravity are ready, switch between them, pick a model, install a missing one, or let Browsentic fix what one still needs
Skills Every skill the router can see and which folder it came from
Activity Your standing approvals, forgettable per site, and the downloads agents captured
Logs ~/.browsentic/daemon.log, followed live
Settings Light, dark or system appearance; whether the daemon starts with the app; browsentic in your terminal; the line that registers Browsentic with an MCP client; uninstall

There is also a menu bar item with the daemon’s state and the same on, off and restart.

Closing the window does not stop anything. The daemon is a background process of its own, so the side panel and any MCP client keep working with the app closed or quit.

browsentic in your terminal

Settings → “browsentic” in your terminal links the launcher into a folder that is already on your PATH and already writable — ~/.local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin or /usr/local/bin. No shell profile is edited and no password is asked for. After that every command in the CLI reference works, against the same install the app manages.

If you also have npm i -g browsentic, remove it (npm rm -g browsentic) so there is one command, not two that can drift apart.

Updating

Settings shows a banner when a newer release is out. Run the install line again — it replaces the app and opens it: the first screen notices the command and the extension are older than the ones it carries, and Set up everything replaces both and restarts the daemon. Then press ↻ on the Browsentic card at chrome://extensions, which is the one step no installer can do for you.

browsentic update does not replace an install the app made; it says so and points back here.

Uninstall

Settings → Uninstall… runs browsentic uninstall: it unpairs every browser, stops the daemon and removes ~/.browsentic and ~/browsentic, optionally keeping your skills. Remove the Browsentic card at chrome://extensions first, and drag the app to the Trash afterwards.

Building it yourself 

yarn mac:dmg        # → dist/mac/Browsentic.app and dist/mac/Browsentic-<version>.dmg

That needs the Swift toolchain — Xcode or the Command Line Tools. The source is a SwiftPM package in src/mac/; see internals/mac-app.md.