The official Xal command-line tool is the xal native binary. It starts the terminal coding harness in the current project and can be scripted from POSIX-compatible shells. The beta installer selects the correct x64 or arm64 build for macOS, Linux, or Windows environments using Git Bash, MSYS2, or Cygwin.
curl -fsSL https://xal.sh/install | sh -s -- --beta xal xal --mode plan xal update
The default install location is ~/.local/bin. Pass installer options to select another path, and make sure that path is present in PATH. Xal ships as one compiled binary, so the installed CLI does not require Node.js, Bun, Python, or a package manager at runtime.
Use plan mode when an agent should investigate without modifying files, normal mode for approval-gated development, and yolo mode only when unattended writes are intentional. The installation guide documents supported targets, checksums, custom paths, beta channels, and release behavior. Source and release history are available in the official repository.