Platform support

Supported operating systems, shell environments, install paths, and runtime requirements for Clother.

Supported platforms

macOS

zsh and bash

Linux

zsh and bash

Windows WSL

zsh and bash inside WSL

Native Windows (outside WSL) is not supported, as Clother depends on the Claude Code CLI which itself requires a POSIX-compatible environment.

Default install paths

The installer places clother, all clother-* launcher symlinks, and the claude shim in a platform-specific bin directory:

Platform	Default bin directory
macOS	~/bin
Linux	~/.local/bin (XDG base directory standard)

Make sure this directory is on your PATH. If it is not, add it to your shell profile:

# Linux (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc)
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

# macOS (~/.zshrc)
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

Overriding the install directory

You can choose a different bin directory at install time using the --bin-dir flag or the CLOTHER_BIN environment variable.

# Using the --bin-dir flag
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jolehuit/clother/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- --bin-dir ~/.local/bin

# Using the environment variable
export CLOTHER_BIN="$HOME/.local/bin"
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jolehuit/clother/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

After a custom install, run clother status to confirm the directory Clother is using.

Go runtime

Clother is a single statically-linked Go binary. It has no runtime dependencies — no interpreter, no shared libraries, no virtual environment. The binary runs directly on the host OS.

The installer downloads a pre-built release artifact for your platform and architecture. You do not need Go installed to use Clother.

Environment variables

The following environment variables affect Clother’s behavior:

Variable	Description
CLOTHER_BIN	Override the bin directory where launchers are installed
CLOTHER_CONFIG_DIR	Override the config directory (default: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/clother)
CLOTHER_DATA_DIR	Override the data directory (default: $XDG_DATA_HOME/clother)
CLOTHER_CACHE_DIR	Override the cache directory (default: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/clother)
CLOTHER_NO_UPDATE_CHECK	Set to 1 to disable the automatic update check
CLOTHER_UPDATE_URL	Override the update metadata URL (default: GitHub releases)
CLOTHER_RELEASE_BASE_URL	Override the release artifact base URL used by the install script

Local release testing

If you are building Clother from source and want to test the install script against a local release server, set CLOTHER_RELEASE_BASE_URL to point at your local HTTP server before running the installer:

CLOTHER_RELEASE_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8000 ./scripts/install.sh install

This is useful for verifying release artifacts before publishing them.