Installation

This guide covers installing the tes CLI, enabling shell prompt integration, and configuring your AI coding editors.

Requirements

Tessera is lightweight and self-contained:

• OS: macOS (APFS), Linux (Btrfs / XFS / bcachefs / ext4), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or Windows (WSL2 and native Windows with PowerShell / Windows Terminal)
• Git: Standard Git 2.23+

INFO

On macOS (APFS) and Linux (Btrfs / XFS / bcachefs), Tessera uses native Copy-on-Write filesystem clones (clonefile and FICLONE) to duplicate node_modules and target directories in milliseconds without using extra disk space. On ext4, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Windows, Tessera automatically falls back to portable recursive sandbox cloning.

Installing the CLI

macOS, Linux, and BSD

Install tes on macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel), Linux (x86_64 & ARM64, glibc & musl), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or NetBSD:

curl -fsSL https://tessera.getlunaris.dev/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell)

Install tes.exe on Windows (x86_64 and ARM64) using PowerShell:

irm https://tessera.getlunaris.dev/install.ps1 | iex

The Windows installer verifies the SHA-256 checksum, extracts tes.exe into $HOME\.local\bin, adds it to your user Path, and configures your PowerShell $PROFILE.

Prebuilt Binaries

You can also download prebuilt archives directly from GitHub Releases:

Platform	Architecture	Release Archive
macOS	Apple Silicon (arm64)	tes-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
macOS	Intel (x86_64)	tes-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
Linux	x86_64 (static musl / glibc)	tes-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz / tes-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
Linux	ARM64 (aarch64 static musl / glibc)	tes-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz / tes-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
Windows	x86_64 (MSVC)	tes-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
Windows	ARM64 (MSVC)	tes-aarch64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
FreeBSD	x86_64	tes-x86_64-unknown-freebsd.tar.gz
OpenBSD	x86_64	tes-x86_64-unknown-openbsd.tar.gz
NetBSD	x86_64	tes-x86_64-unknown-netbsd.tar.gz
VS Code / Antigravity / Cursor	Universal .vsix	tessera-vscode.vsix

Verify the installation:

tes --version

Shell Integration

Each terminal tab can switch branches independently, so it helps to show the active branch in your prompt:

~/code/my-app main (tes:feat/pricing) ❯

Automatic Setup

Run tes env --install once to configure your shell profiles (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, ~/.kshrc, ~/.mkshrc, ~/.tcshrc, ~/.cshrc, Fish's config.fish, and PowerShell's $PROFILE on Windows) automatically:

tes env --install

Open a new terminal tab (or reload your shell profile) to activate the prompt indicator and <TAB> auto-completion for branch names, commit SHAs, and checkpoints.

Manual Shell Setup

If you prefer to configure your shell manually, add the line matching your shell:

Zsh (~/.zshrc) (Powerlevel10k, Oh My Zsh, Starship, and default Zsh)

eval "$(tes env --zsh)"

Bash (~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile) (Bash 3.2+ and 5.x, Starship, Oh My Bash, and default Bash)

eval "$(tes env --bash)"

Fish (~/.config/fish/config.fish) (Tide, Starship, Hydro, and default Fish)

tes env --fish | source

POSIX sh / dash / ksh / mksh / oksh / yash (~/.profile, ~/.kshrc, or ~/.mkshrc)

eval "$(tes env --sh)"

tcsh / BSD csh (~/.tcshrc or ~/.cshrc)

eval "`tes env --tcsh`"

Nushell (~/.config/nushell/config.nu)

tes env --nu | save -f ~/.config/nushell/tes.nu
source ~/.config/nushell/tes.nu

Elvish (~/.config/elvish/rc.elv)

tes env --elvish >> ~/.config/elvish/rc.elv

PowerShell ($PROFILE)

Invoke-Expression (& tes env --pwsh)

Initializing a Repository

Inside any project directory, run:

tes init

By default, tes init auto-detects which AI coding tools you use and generates their instruction files and hooks. To target a specific editor, pass --harness:

tes init --harness antigravity
tes init --harness claude
tes init --harness cursor
tes init --harness windsurf
tes init --harness kiro
tes init --harness opencode
tes init --harness codex
tes init --harness vscode
tes init --harness all

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Next Steps

• Your First Workflow - Walk through a multi-branch workflow step by step
• Guides - Explore in-depth guides for agents, terminals, and the IDE extension