Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Installation

Audience: new users who want a working pulse binary on their PATH.

This page walks through installing Pulse, the prerequisites it needs, and how to verify the install. Pulse is distributed as a single static Go binary; there is no installer, no daemon, and no config file.

LLM agents using MCP: see the getting-started skill via pulse_skills_get — it covers session bootstrap rather than local install.

Prerequisites

RequirementMinimum
Go toolchain1.24 (see go.mod)
OSLinux, macOS, or Windows (anywhere Go cross-compiles)
DiskA few MB for the binary; cohort files live wherever you point PULSE_DATA_DIR

go.mod is the source of truth for the supported Go version; if it drifts from this page the go.mod value wins.

Install with go install

The fastest path on a developer machine:

go install github.com/frankbardon/pulse/cmd/pulse@latest

This drops a pulse binary at $(go env GOBIN) (typically ~/go/bin). Make sure that directory is on your PATH.

Pin a specific release by replacing @latest with a tag:

go install github.com/frankbardon/pulse/cmd/pulse@v0.2.0

Build from source

The same binary, built reproducibly from a checkout:

git clone https://github.com/frankbardon/pulse.git
cd pulse
make build
# Binary at ./bin/pulse

The Makefile is documented in CLAUDE.md → Build / Dev / Test Workflow; the relevant targets are make build, make test, make lint, and make cover.

Configure the data directory

Pulse reads and writes .pulse files under a base directory called PULSE_DATA_DIR. Most commands accept absolute paths and will work without it, but pulse mcp requires the variable so the MCP server can enumerate cohorts:

export PULSE_DATA_DIR=/var/data/pulse

The repo Makefile auto-loads a .env file from the repo root, so you can also drop PULSE_DATA_DIR=... there for local development.

PULSE_DATA_DIR is the only required environment variable. See Flag Reference for the full list of CLI flags and environment knobs.

Verify

pulse --version
pulse --json | head -20

pulse --json prints the root manifest — the full self-description of commands, components, field types, and embedded skills. If you see a top-level format_version: "1.0" envelope, the install is working.

Where to go next