Installation

Desktop App

Download the desktop application for a self-contained experience with no dependencies:

The desktop app bundles its own Node.js runtime — you do not need Node.js installed separately. It includes the full CLI, the interactive graph viewer, and auto-updates.

Go to downloads page

Global Install (CLI)

Install the SwarmVault CLI globally with npm:

npm install -g @swarmvaultai/cli

This installs the swarmvault command system-wide. The legacy vault alias is also available.

On the first successful interactive run, the CLI also prints a one-time repo-star prompt and begins checking for newer published versions in the background. Update notices are interactive-only: they stay off in CI, --json, MCP, and the long-running serve/watch flows.

Requirements

  • Node.js >=24
  • npm, pnpm, or yarn

Verify Installation

swarmvault --version

Run your first vault from a scratch folder:

mkdir my-vault
cd my-vault
swarmvault quickstart ../your-repo

If a newer published release exists, the CLI prints the upgrade command directly:

npm install -g @swarmvaultai/cli@latest

Set SWARMVAULT_NO_NOTICES=1 if you want to disable both the update notice and the one-time star prompt.

Included Runtime

The global CLI includes everything needed for the standard local workflow, including swarmvault graph serve and swarmvault graph export. End users do not need to install @swarmvaultai/viewer separately.

OpenClaw / ClawHub Skill

If you use OpenClaw through ClawHub, install the packaged skill alongside the CLI:

clawhub install swarmvault

The published skill bundle includes SKILL.md, a ClawHub README, examples, references, troubleshooting notes, and validation prompts. It does not replace the CLI binary, so keep @swarmvaultai/cli installed through npm.

Release validation is also performed against the published npm install path, not just the source checkout, so the global package flow is the primary supported path. That validation covers real installed runs for remote URL asset localization, add capture fallback, benchmark artifacts, visual outputs, project-aware code ingestion, graph export formats, review and candidate workflows, watch automation plus watch status, and MCP tooling.

The same published-package validation path now also covers swarmvault source add for a local directory fixture, a deterministic docs crawl fixture, and one real public GitHub repo root import.

There is also a pinned small-repo OSS validation lane for the published package. It runs the installed CLI against a compact public corpus such as ky, react-markdown, itsdangerous, and normalize.css so release checks stay realistic without turning into an expensive large-repo crawl.

From Source

git clone https://github.com/swarmclawai/swarmvault.git
cd swarmvault
pnpm install
pnpm build

The built CLI entry point will be available at packages/cli/dist/index.js.