Install and sign in

Raven is a signed macOS app that updates itself. Download it, drag it to Applications, and open it.

Raven is a free download for macOS on Apple Silicon: Download for macOS. Everything below describes the app as it ships today.

Sign in to Raven

The first launch asks you to sign in with Google or GitHub. Raven opens your browser, you authenticate there, and the browser hands the session back to the app. The session is stored encrypted on your Mac using the system keychain, and it’s checked locally after that — so signing in once is enough, and the app keeps working offline.

Developer tools

Raven needs Apple’s free command line tools to create and manage projects. If they’re missing, setup pauses on one extra step: start the install, follow Apple’s installer for a few minutes, and Raven notices when it’s done and moves on. You’ll see the same prompt later if you add a project on a Mac without them.

Connect an agent

Raven runs Claude Code and Codex. You don’t have to install either one: the command-line binaries ship inside the app. What Raven needs is your account. Setup asks for at least one agent; you can skip it and add one later, but nothing runs until you do.

Open Settings › Account › Agents and choose Add account under Claude Code or Codex:

• Claude Code signs in through your browser; paste the code it gives you back into Raven. Claude subscriptions and Claude Console (API-billed) accounts both work.
• Codex offers two routes: a ChatGPT account, signed in through the browser, or an OpenAI API key pasted from platform.openai.com.

Then choose Save and use to make that account active, or Save account to keep it for later. You can save several accounts for each agent and switch between them.

Raven only ever runs turns on accounts saved here. It never falls back to a login the CLI happens to have on your machine — so if a chat has no usable account, it says so with a card in the conversation and a button to set one up. An account Raven adopted from a terminal sign-in asks you to sign in again, once; after that it runs as its own Raven-managed profile, separate from the terminal’s. A token that expires is caught by the next real turn, or by Refresh on the accounts page; the fix is Reconnect on the account’s card.

The two agents are independent. Connecting Codex never touches Claude, and you can use one without the other. MCP servers you’ve added to Claude Code in the terminal connect in Raven’s Claude chats too — see Integrations.

Connect GitHub

Pull requests are optional, but if you want them, connect GitHub from Settings › Integrations (setup offers it too, above the agent accounts). Raven uses GitHub’s device flow — it shows you a code, you approve it in the browser — and stores the resulting token encrypted in your keychain.

Without a GitHub connection, everything else still works; worktree workspaces just show a Connect GitHub button where the pull-request control would be.

Linear, Sentry, and PostHog connect separately for each project, and 1Password lets the agent sign in on web pages. See Integrations.

Add a project

Point Raven at a git repo on your machine. One dialog covers the three ways in — Open a folder, Clone from GitHub, or New project for a fresh repo with an initial commit — and asks where the project’s first workspace should run, Local or Worktree (Local only for a folder with nothing committed yet, since a worktree needs a commit to start from). A folder that isn’t a git repo yet is initialized when you add it.

When you add a project, Raven records one thing on its own: the gitignored .env* files at the repo root, as the list of files carried into each worktree. It also suggests a setup command from the lockfile it finds (pnpm-lock.yaml becomes pnpm install, and so on), but only as a placeholder in the project’s settings — nothing runs until you save a command. See Project setup.

Your first workspace

Create a workspace, type what you want, and send. That’s the whole loop.

New workspaces run local by default: in your project folder, on your current branch, with changes landing in your files as the agent makes them. When you want the agent working somewhere it can’t disturb you, pick Worktree in the New Workspace composer — see Worktree workspaces.

Bring in your existing chats

The last setup step offers to import your Claude Code and Codex CLI sessions from the last seven days as chats — one workspace each, with repos Raven doesn’t know yet added as projects — so you can pick up where you left off. The same import lives in Settings › Chats › Import chats and reaches back 30 days. A session already imported is never offered twice, even if you delete the chat.

Updates

Raven checks for updates on its own. When one is ready, a card shows the version that is ready to install and a one-line summary of the release, with What’s new for the full notes and Restart to install it. Installing stops running agents and closes terminal sessions. Settings › Updates shows your current version, has Check for updates, and an Alpha updates switch if you’d rather see changes early — alpha builds may be unstable, and their update card carries a one-line blurb with no What’s new.