Installation

Install the latest prebuilt Rho binary on macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.sh | sh

On Windows PowerShell:

irm https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.ps1 | iex

The macOS and Linux installer writes to $HOME/.local/bin by default. The Windows installer writes to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\rho\bin and adds that directory to your user PATH.

After installing the binary, Rho leaves the credential backend unset and uses the OS store by default. The first interactive /login asks which backend to use. The OS store is recommended when available. You can also opt into a local file protected by filesystem permissions but not encrypted at rest.

Set RHO_CREDENTIAL_STORE=os|file during install, or run rho credential-store set os or rho credential-store set file, to make this choice without the login picker:

curl -fsSL https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.sh | RHO_CREDENTIAL_STORE=file sh

$env:RHO_CREDENTIAL_STORE = "file"; irm https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.ps1 | iex

For more detail, see where credentials live.

You can also install Rho with Scoop on Windows:

scoop bucket add rho https://github.com/matthewyjiang/rho
scoop install rho

Or install the manifest directly:

scoop install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matthewyjiang/rho/main/bucket/rho.json

To use a different directory, set RHO_INSTALL_DIR:

curl -fsSL https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.sh | RHO_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin sh

$env:RHO_INSTALL_DIR = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\rho\bin"; irm https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.ps1 | iex

To install a specific release, set RHO_VERSION. Accepted forms include v0.9.0, 0.9.0, and the full release tag rho-coding-agent-v0.9.0:

curl -fsSL https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.sh | RHO_VERSION=v0.9.0 sh

$env:RHO_VERSION = "v0.9.0"; irm https://matthewyjiang.github.io/rho/install.ps1 | iex

If your platform has no prebuilt binary, install from crates.io with Cargo:

cargo install rho-coding-agent

Run Rho directly:

rho

If Cargo's bin directory is not on your PATH, add it before running the interactive TUI or automation commands:

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

Claude Code binary (optional)

Agent definitions with runtime: claude-cli need the claude binary on PATH. Rho does not ship or install it. Install Claude Code from Anthropic's docs (setup), for example:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Confirm with claude --version. Sign in from Rho with /login claude-code (terminal handoff; Claude Code stores the credential). Details: Claude Code runtime sign-in and Claude Code as a delegated runtime.

Next, configure authentication and models. To embed Rho as a headless Rust library instead of installing the CLI, start with SDK installation and support.