Installation

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Installation

CommitBrief ships pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows on amd64 and arm64. Goreleaser publishes them to GitHub Releases on every tag. A pre-release tag (e.g. v1.0.0-rc.1) is published too, marked as a pre-release; only the Homebrew formula and Scoop manifest are not updated for it.

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install CommitBrief/tap/commitbrief

Upgrades follow brew update && brew upgrade commitbrief. The formula is auto-updated by goreleaser at CommitBrief/homebrew-tap on every stable tag.

Scoop (Windows)

scoop bucket add commitbrief https://github.com/CommitBrief/scoop-bucket
scoop install commitbrief

The manifest is auto-updated at CommitBrief/scoop-bucket.

Go install

go install github.com/CommitBrief/commitbrief/cmd/commitbrief@latest

This is the only path that lets you target pre-release tags:

go install github.com/CommitBrief/commitbrief/cmd/commitbrief@v1.0.0-rc.1

go install writes the binary to $(go env GOPATH)/bin/commitbrief (typically ~/go/bin/commitbrief). If that directory is not on your PATH, the binary is not found by name — invoke it with an explicit path or add the directory to PATH:

export PATH="$(go env GOPATH)/bin:$PATH"

The Go-install path does not get ldflags-injected version/commit/date strings; --version reports the upstream tag from runtime/debug.BuildInfo but commit and built show as none / unknown. Brew and Scoop binaries embed all three.

GitHub Releases (raw binaries)

Pre-built archives for every published tag — including pre-releases — are at:

https://github.com/CommitBrief/commitbrief/releases

Download the archive that matches your platform (e.g. commitbrief_1.18.0_darwin_arm64.tar.gz), extract it, and place the binary somewhere on your PATH. Each archive ships the commitbrief binary, LICENSE, README.md, CHANGELOG.md, and generated man pages under man/.

Verifying the install

commitbrief --version

A successful install reports something like:

commitbrief 1.0.0 (commit abc1234, built 2026-05-27T12:34:56Z)

In a TTY, the splash logo prints to stderr before most commands run, but --version deliberately suppresses it so the line above is all you get — easy to capture and parse. The logo is also suppressed when stderr is redirected or piped (it would appear as raw ANSI escapes), so capturing output via commitbrief --json | jq stays clean.

Requirements

• Git must be available on PATH. Every command that reads a diff runs the git binary. There is no built-in fallback (Requires v1.21.0 or later); without it they stop with git not found on PATH. Install git and make sure it is on your PATH.
• An LLM provider — see Providers. The mock provider is registered for tests; production reviews need Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Cohere, Ollama, or one of the CLI-tool-backed providers.

Uninstalling

• Homebrew: brew uninstall commitbrief && brew untap CommitBrief/tap
• Scoop: scoop uninstall commitbrief && scoop bucket rm commitbrief
• Go install: rm $(go env GOPATH)/bin/commitbrief
• Raw binary: delete the file.

Removing the binary leaves your ~/.commitbrief/ config and any repo-local .commitbrief/ directories in place. Delete them manually if you want a fully clean uninstall.

See also

• Quick start — first review after installing.
• First-time setup — wizard, doctor, first run.
• Providers — pick an LLM backend.
• Global flags — --version and other flags.

See also: Installation