Installation¶

gdc ships as two small command-line programs:

Binary	What it is
`gdc-tui`	The interactive terminal app — the everyday way to use gdc.
`gdc`	The headless command line — for scripts, automation, and inspecting your data.

You install both by downloading the release for your platform and putting the binaries on your PATH. There's nothing to compile and no toolchain to set up.

Prerequisites¶

A model backend to connect to. gdc does not ship a model; it talks to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. The simplest option is a local runner such as Ollama. See Model providers for the full list.

That's the only requirement — gdc itself is a self-contained binary.

Get the binaries¶

Download the gdc release for your operating system and CPU architecture. Each release contains the two executables, gdc and gdc-tui.

Where to download

Get the release from wherever you received gdc — your team's download location or release page. Pick the build that matches your platform (for example, Linux x86-64, macOS arm64, or Windows x86-64).

Unpack the archive if the download is compressed:

Linux / macOSWindows

tar -xzf gdc-<version>-<platform>.tar.gz

Extract the .zip with Explorer or:

Expand-Archive gdc-<version>-<platform>.zip -DestinationPath gdc

Put the binaries on your PATH¶

So you can run gdc and gdc-tui from any directory, place them in a directory that's already on your PATH:

Linux / macOSWindows

chmod +x gdc gdc-tui
install -m755 gdc gdc-tui ~/.local/bin/
# make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH

copy gdc.exe gdc-tui.exe %USERPROFILE%\bin\
# make sure %USERPROFILE%\bin is on your PATH

Verify the install:

gdc --version
gdc-tui --version

Where gdc keeps its data¶

On first use gdc creates a ~/.gdc/ directory in your home folder. It holds your saved sessions, configuration, memory notes, and any plugins you install. Nothing is written outside your project directory and this folder unless you explicitly point gdc elsewhere.

Path	Contents
`~/.gdc/config.toml`	Your user-level configuration.
`~/.gdc/sessions.db`	Saved sessions (conversation history).
`~/.gdc/memory/`	Persistent memory notes.
`~/.gdc/plugins/`	Installed plugins.
`~/.gdc/projects/<name>/`	Per-project session databases (used by the terminal app).

You can override these locations with configuration or command-line flags — see Configuration.

Next step¶

Head to the Quickstart to connect a model and run your first task.