Installation

kontext is a single static-ish binary. It needs git 2.31 or newer at runtime and nothing else.

Install script (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SemanS/kontext/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

The script downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform from the latest release into ~/.local/bin/kontext and checks it against the release's SHA256SUMS; a mismatch stops the install. When no binary matches your platform it builds that release's tag from source with cargo --locked. A failed download stops with an error; it never falls back to building main. The script ends non-zero when the installed binary does not run (kontext --version).

Variable	Default	Meaning
KONTEXT_BIN_DIR	~/.local/bin	where the binary goes
KONTEXT_VERSION	latest	a release tag such as v0.1.0
KONTEXT_REPO	SemanS/kontext	install from a fork

Prebuilt binaries: macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Linux x86_64 and ARM64 (glibc 2.34 or newer: Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, RHEL 9 and later), and Windows x86_64. Every release carries SHA256SUMS; to check by hand: shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing.

From source

Requires Rust 1.90 or newer (rustup.rs); CI checks this version against Cargo.lock.

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/SemanS/kontext --root ~/.local
# or from a checkout
git clone https://github.com/SemanS/kontext && cd kontext
cargo build --release --locked && install -m 755 target/release/kontext ~/.local/bin/

Check the installation

kontext --version
kontext status        # inside any git repository

Make sure the directory is on your PATH. Git hooks installed by kontext also look in ~/.local/bin and ~/.cargo/bin, so commits made from GUI clients find the binary even when their PATH is minimal.

Platforms

• macOS and Linux are supported.
• Windows: the binary builds and the brief, search, MCP server and CLI work. Git hooks, agent host hooks and verify commands run through sh and are untested on native Windows. WSL works like Linux.

Updating

Rerun the install script (or cargo install … --force). Local state under .git/kontext/ is versioned; an incompatible search index is rebuilt automatically.

Uninstalling

kontext hooks uninstall          # in each repository where you installed hooks
rm ~/.local/bin/kontext
rm -rf ~/.config/kontext         # your personal adapters and trust records

Knowledge files in your repositories (.ai/) are ordinary Markdown and stay where they are. Local state lives in $(git rev-parse --git-common-dir)/kontext/ and can be deleted at any time.