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title Installation
description Install JD.AI, configure prerequisites, and run it for the first time.

Installation

Get JD.AI up and running on your machine. This page covers prerequisites, installation methods, first run, and basic CLI options. For provider-specific setup, see Provider Setup.

JD.AI CLI help output

Prerequisites

Verify your .NET version:

dotnet --version
# Should output 10.0.x or later

Install as a global .NET tool

The recommended way to install JD.AI is as a global .NET tool from NuGet:

dotnet tool install --global JD.AI

This makes the jdai command available system-wide.

Update to the latest version

dotnet tool update --global JD.AI

You can also update from within JD.AI using jdai update or the /update slash command (see Updating below).

Install to a local path

If you prefer not to install globally, use --tool-path:

dotnet tool install JD.AI --tool-path ./tools
./tools/jdai

Install as a native binary (no .NET required)

Pre-built self-contained binaries are published to GitHub Releases for every release. No .NET SDK is needed.

  1. Download the archive for your platform from the latest release:

    Platform Asset
    Windows x64 jdai-win-x64.zip
    Windows ARM64 jdai-win-arm64.zip
    Linux x64 jdai-linux-x64.tar.gz
    Linux ARM64 jdai-linux-arm64.tar.gz
    macOS Intel jdai-osx-x64.tar.gz
    macOS Apple Silicon jdai-osx-arm64.tar.gz

  2. Extract and place the binary on your PATH:

    # Linux / macOS
tar -xzf jdai-linux-x64.tar.gz -C ~/.local/bin/

# Windows (PowerShell)
Expand-Archive jdai-win-x64.zip -DestinationPath "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\jdai"
# Then add that directory to your PATH

  3. Verify:

    jdai --print "hello"

Once installed, use jdai update to update to newer releases without repeating these steps.

Install from source

Clone the repository and build locally:

git clone https://github.com/JerrettDavis/JD.AI.git
cd JD.AI
dotnet build
dotnet run --project src/JD.AI

First run

Launch JD.AI in any project directory:

cd /path/to/your/project
jdai

On startup, JD.AI:

  1. Checks for available AI providers
  2. Displays detected providers and models
  3. Selects the best available provider
  4. Loads project instructions (JDAI.md, CLAUDE.md, etc.)
  5. Shows the welcome banner

If no providers are detected, JD.AI will prompt you to configure one. The quickest way is to set an API key environment variable:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
jdai --provider openai

See Provider Setup for all 15 providers.

Common CLI options

Flag Description
--provider <name> Use a specific provider (e.g. openai, anthropic)
--model <name> Use a specific model
--resume <id> Resume a previous session by ID
--continue Continue the most recent session
--new Start a fresh session
--print Non-interactive mode — print the response and exit
--output-format <fmt> Output format: text, json, or markdown
--verbose Enable debug logging
--dangerously-skip-permissions Skip all tool confirmations

For the full list, run jdai --help.

Verify the installation

After installing, confirm everything works:

jdai --print "hello, are you working?"

JD.AI should detect a provider, send the prompt, and print a response.

Updating

JD.AI includes built-in update and install CLI commands that detect how the tool was installed and apply updates using the appropriate method.

jdai update

Checks for a newer version and applies it:

jdai update

JD.AI automatically detects the installation method (dotnet tool, native binary, winget, chocolatey, scoop, brew, or apt) and runs the correct upgrade command. For native binary installs, it downloads the latest release from GitHub and replaces the binary in-place.

Flag Description
--check Check for updates without applying them
--force Force update even if already on the latest version

jdai install

Downloads and installs a specific version from GitHub Releases as a native binary. No .NET SDK required:

# Install the latest version
jdai install

# Install a specific version
jdai install 1.2.0

# Force reinstall
jdai install --force

This always uses the GitHub release strategy regardless of the original installation method, making it useful for switching from a dotnet tool install to a self-contained binary.

In-session updates

You can run update workflow commands in-session:

  • /update status
  • /update check
  • /update plan [target|latest]
  • /update apply [target|latest]

JD.AI checks for updates automatically on startup and displays a notification when a newer version is available.

Operator safety and rollback notes

  • Run /update plan before /update apply to verify component order and timing windows.
  • Keep updates.requireApproval=true in shared/operator environments.
  • Use conservative updates.drainTimeout and updates.reconnectTimeout values to avoid dropping in-flight work.
  • If an update fails, reinstall a known-good version via dotnet tool install/update -g <package> --version <known-good> and restart services.

Uninstall

dotnet tool uninstall --global JD.AI

Next steps