Ara CLI

Ara CLI is the local control surface. It signs you in, connects your coding agents to Ara, and installs the native worker that can run approved work on your own machine.

Install

$
curl -fsSL https://ara.so/install.sh | bash
$
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

The installer places a signed binary at ~/.local/bin/ara.

Sign in

$
ara login

Sign-in completes in the browser and binds the CLI to one workspace. The CLI keeps its own revocable grant, separate from the grants held by each coding client.

Connect your coding agents

$
ara mcp setup
$
ara mcp status

This configures every supported client Ara detects and starts each one’s native OAuth flow. Add --clients codex,claude,cursor when you want to limit it. What each client receives, and which tools the connection exposes, is covered in Ara MCP.

Run work on this Mac

$
ara device

Bare ara device installs or repairs this Mac as a background Ara Device, and is idempotent: running it again on the same version changes nothing. The signed worker updates its own managed runtime, health-checks the active release, and rolls back a failed activation.

Ara Device is an execution target for a session, not a separate product. You start the session in Ara Cloud and choose this Mac as where it runs. Approved file and shell operations execute locally; the transcript stays in Ara Cloud.

To connect a Mac from the web app instead, open Workspace → Devices, choose Copy Ara CLI setup on the Add a Mac card, and complete the browser approval.

Keys for CI

Interactive coding agents should use OAuth. For unattended CI or headless jobs, create a scoped ara_ API key and store it in that job’s secret manager. See the API quickstart.