Reference

Install from Source

Build the actor.sh binaries, put them on your PATH, and verify the daemon.

actor.sh is three Rust binaries plus a background daemon. Installation means building them and putting them on your PATH.

Prerequisites

  • Claude Code — the claude CLI must be installed and on your PATH. Every session is a claude process, including the main session itself.
  • git — sessions run in isolated git worktrees.
  • A Rust toolchain (cargo) — to build from source.
  • codex — only if you plan to run sessions on the Codex agent. Not needed for the default Claude workflow.

Build

Clone the repository and build in release mode:

git clone https://github.com/mme/actor-rust
cd actor-rust
cargo build --release

This produces three binaries under target/release/:

BinaryRole
actorThe CLI. Also opens the interactive main session.
actordThe background daemon that manages sessions.
actor-mcpThe MCP server that exposes session tools to agents.

Install on your PATH

Copy all three into one directory on your PATH, and keep them together: the binaries find each other as siblings. actor auto-spawns actord from the same directory and re-execs actor-mcp from there too.

install -Dm755 target/release/{actor,actord,actor-mcp} ~/.local/bin/

(Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH.)

Verify

Query the daemon. The first call auto-spawns actord if it isn't already running:

actor status

This prints the daemon's liveness, version, and pid. For the full command surface:

actor --help

Run it

Launch the main session:

actor claude

This opens an interactive Claude session already wired to actor.sh — the MCP tools and the coordination system prompt are injected automatically; there is nothing else to register. The Quickstart walks you through spawning your first session from here.

Authentication

By default each agent uses whatever credentials its CLI is already configured with. If you sign in to Claude with a subscription rather than an API key, set use-subscription so actor.sh drops ANTHROPIC_API_KEY from the agent's environment — see Configuring Claude.

Updating

Pull, rebuild, and reinstall the binaries. The running daemon keeps the old version until it restarts:

git pull && cargo build --release
install -Dm755 target/release/{actor,actord,actor-mcp} ~/.local/bin/

A fresh actor invocation spawns the new actord once the old one exits.