Install DevThrottle and run your first agent

Just installing on Windows, by hand? Take step 1 of the path instead - it is the same install, walked through in ten minutes, and it hands you straight on to your first agent. This page is the full reference: every install route, including the ones that page sends you here for.

DevThrottle is a normal desktop app. Start with a free DevThrottle account - sign up here - and the download follows it. On Windows: double-click and you are running. On a Mac: one pasted Terminal command installs it (see below). This guide takes you from nothing to your first coding agent in the Director, and DevThrottle's own setup handles the rest. Want an AI coding agent to do the whole install for you? See Installing with an AI coding agent.

Before you start

DevThrottle is the control room. It runs and watches coding agents - tools like Claude Code or Codex that write and edit your code. You bring the agent and its subscription or key; DevThrottle puts it in one place and keeps it running. If you do not have a coding agent yet, that is fine - DevThrottle can install Claude Code for you when it first opens, and our Get Started quiz will tell you honestly which agent and plan fit you best.

• Operating system: Windows 10 or 11, or macOS on Apple Silicon (workstation only - see Installing on a Mac).
• A coding agent: Claude Code is the simplest start. DevThrottle can install it for you at its setup's agents step.
• A DevThrottle account: free to create, email only, no credit card. It is the first step here and the download follows it. (The installer itself asks you for nothing, and the app's own sign-in comes later, at its gateway step.)

Step 1 - Create your account, then download

Sign up for a free DevThrottle account - email only, no credit card - and the Windows installer is on your account waiting for you. No payment is required to run the app on your own machine with your own agent.

If the download stops just short of finishing, your browser is holding it. Windows decides whether to trust a file partly by how many people have downloaded it before, and every DevThrottle release is a brand-new file, so the first people to get it are asked to confirm it by hand. Click the download icon near the top right of your browser - it will be showing a small warning badge. The short panel that opens says the installer is not commonly downloaded, but it has no Keep button: click Downloads at the top of that panel to open your full downloads list. There the same file offers Keep and Delete as plain buttons - click Keep, and because the file has already downloaded in full it finishes at once. The publisher shown is Center Consulting Inc. On a work computer, your organisation's rules can remove the Keep option - if it is not there, ask whoever manages the machine.

Step 2 - Install

Run the installer you downloaded and follow the prompts - Welcome, Install, Complete. If Windows shows a SmartScreen notice on a fresh download, choose More info -> Run anyway. It takes about a minute, needs no admin rights, and never asks you for an account: it places DevThrottle and the background launcher that keeps it available, and nothing else is required of you. Then choose Open Director on the last screen.

Step 3 - First run

Launch DevThrottle. The first time it opens, it walks you through an eight-step setup wizard - and this is where the app offers to sign you in, using the account you already made. The installer never asked, and it never will.

After a welcome screen, the gateway is step 2 of 8, and it is a choice of three cards rather than a sign-in you have to take. Hosted gateway is marked RECOMMENDED and is already selected: you sign in through your browser and this machine is enrolled. Self-hosted gateway is for people running their own. Not now is local-only on this machine, needs no account at all, and connects any time afterwards from Settings. Not now is a real answer - the Director, its sessions and your coding agents all work without a gateway; what you give up is the remote half (your sessions on your phone, voice, the morning report) and the cc-devthrottle command line, which is the one cc- tool that talks through a gateway.

The six steps after it are all about this particular machine, and on most of them the wizard does the work itself: the coding agents on it (it offers Install Claude Code for me if it finds none), its own command-line tools, the folders your projects live in, where your screenshots land, and a browser an agent can drive. The last screen reads You are ready and lists what was actually set up. Then you land on the Director - empty for now, waiting for its first agent. Step 1 of the path walks the same wizard screen by screen: Install and connect.

Step 4 - Start your first agent

Pick a project folder - a new empty one is perfect for a first try - and start an agent on it from the Director. Then talk to it like a person. A good first task:

Create a simple web page that shows the current time, then make it update every second.

Watch the agent write the files in the Director. While it works, its card reads Working; when it needs a decision from you it turns red and reads Needs you. Snoozed, background and exited sessions each say so on the card in the same way. That one glance is the whole point - you never have to go hunting through terminal windows to find out where things stand.

Installing on a Mac

The Mac build is workstation-only: it runs your agents on the Mac, and it connects to a gateway hosted elsewhere. Install it by pasting one command into Terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thefrederiksen/devthrottle/main/scripts/install-mac.sh | bash

The command downloads the latest installer from our GitHub releases, verifies it against the release manifest, places DevThrottle Setup in your Applications folder, and opens it. From there the wizard works just like the Windows one.

Why a command instead of a download button? The Mac installer is not yet notarized by Apple, so macOS blocks it when a browser downloads it ("Apple could not verify... is free of malware") - and modern macOS offers no way past that dialog. Terminal downloads are not quarantined, so the command above opens cleanly every time.

On a Mac, without opening anything

The command above installs the graphical wizard and opens it, which is what you want if you are sitting in front of the machine. If you are not - a coding agent doing the install for you, a setup script, or a machine you reached over ssh - use the headless installer instead. It is the same install engine with no window at all:

curl -fsSL -o devthrottle-setup-cli https://devthrottle.blob.core.windows.net/download/devthrottle-setup-cli-mac-arm64
chmod +x devthrottle-setup-cli
./devthrottle-setup-cli prereqs
./devthrottle-setup-cli install

prereqs checks a coding agent is present; install lays down the app and every cc-* tool per-user. Add --json to either for machine-readable output. Fetching the binary with curl is what keeps Gatekeeper out of the way - the same reason the wizard command uses it. Apple Silicon only.

Installing with an AI coding agent (headless)

Already running a coding agent like Claude Code or Codex? You can have it install DevThrottle for you, start to finish, without touching the graphical installer. There is a headless command-line installer built for exactly this - it lays down the app and every cc-* tool per-user, with no wizard and no admin rights. It is the same install engine the graphical wizard uses, so an agent and a person end up with an identical setup. Point your agent at these steps.

All three routes are filmed end to end on a clean Windows machine: this agent route (1:47), the command-line route (1:57), which is these same two commands, and the desktop installer and setup wizard (6:19).

1. Download

   The headless installer and the release manifest, from the latest public release:

   PowerShell

   curl.exe -L -o devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe https://devthrottle.blob.core.windows.net/download/devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe
   curl.exe -L -o release-manifest.json https://devthrottle.blob.core.windows.net/download/release-manifest.json

2. Verify

   Check the installer against the manifest before running it - Get-FileHash devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256 must match the manifest's entry for that asset. Stop on any mismatch; do not run it.

3. Install

   prereqs only reports whether a coding agent is already on the machine - it installs nothing, and on a clean machine it usually exits non-zero because there is none yet. That is informational: run install regardless. This is why the copy-paste block on the download page omits it - a script that stops on a non-zero exit would never install. install defaults to a per-user workstation install (no admin). Add --json to either for machine-readable output.

   PowerShell

   devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe prereqs
   devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe install

4. Do not install a .NET runtime

   The Director and the Launcher carry their own, so nothing needs to be on the machine first - an agent that adds one out of habit is doing work the install does not want.

5. Sign in

   Run devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe signin - the only step that needs you. It opens this website in your browser, where you sign in, or create an account, and it hands the session back automatically. Joining a gateway you already run on another machine? Use devthrottle-setup-cli-win-x64.exe enroll instead - it signs in and connects this machine to that gateway. Your agent runs everything else unattended.

What is next

That is the full loop: download, install, run, talk to your agent. From here, read What DevThrottle is to understand the Director, the Gateway, and how to reach your agents from a browser or your phone with voice.

Not sure which agent or plan is right for you? Take the two-minute quiz - it gives you an honest, personalized path, not a sales pitch.