Watcher

Monitor your AI coding agents.

Watcher observes agents (Claude Code and Codex) as they work. It hooks into agent sessions on your machine, sends activity to your Watcher backend for analysis, and gives you visibility into, and policy controls over, what agents are doing. For more, see watcher.apolloresearch.ai.

Install

curl -fsSL https://github.com/ApolloResearch/watcher-bin/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash -s -- --cloud
# start the watcher client
watcher

Self-hosted

If your organization runs its own Watcher backend, pass its URL with --watcher-api-url:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/ApolloResearch/watcher-bin/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash -s -- --watcher-api-url https://watcher.veidt.enterprises
# start the watcher client
watcher

The installer downloads the latest release, verifies its checksum, installs the binary to ~/.local/bin/watcher, records your chosen backend, and registers agent hooks (with a consent prompt where config changes are needed). If ~/.local/bin isn't on your PATH, the installer prints the command to add it.

The first time you run watcher, it opens a sign-in page in your browser; monitoring starts once you've signed in with your organization's credentials.

Installing a specific version

curl -fsSL https://github.com/ApolloResearch/watcher-bin/releases/download/v0.11.3/install.sh | bash -s -- --watcher-api-url https://watcher.veidt.enterprises

This is useful for self-hosted instances, where you'll want a client version that matches your server. The client is compatible with server versions within ±1 minor versions (while v0.x.x) of its own version.

Updating

Re-run the same install command you used above. The installer safely replaces the existing installation; your sign-in and settings are kept.

Uninstall

watcher uninstall

CLI reference

Running watcher with no arguments starts the Watcher services. Other commands:

Command	Description
watcher --version	Show the installed Watcher client version.
watcher target set --cloud / --url <url>	Change the backend this install talks to.
watcher hooks install / remove	Install or remove the agent hooks, always for both Claude Code and Codex. install --yes skips the consent prompt (for unattended installs).
watcher autostart install --launcher <script> / uninstall	Install or remove the login agent that runs Watcher on login.
watcher autostart enable / disable	Turn autostart-on-login on or off.
watcher autostart start / stop	Start or stop the login agent now, without waiting for login.
watcher profile list / current / set	List, show, or switch Watcher settings profiles.
watcher build-info	Show build details and the backend target a launch would resolve.
watcher uninstall	Remove hooks, autostart, and the Watcher binary.

Run watcher <command> --help for full details on any command.

Licenses

Third-party license attributions are listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.