Installation

Homebrew is the recommended route on macOS and Linux. go install needs a Go toolchain. Every release on GitHub also ships static archives:

Linux: amd64, arm64
macOS: amd64, arm64
Windows: amd64, arm64

Install

Method	Binaries installed	Needs
Homebrew	`levelfour` and `l4`	macOS or Linux
`go install`	`levelfour` only	a Go toolchain (1.26.3+)
Prebuilt archive	`levelfour` and `l4`	no toolchain, just download and extract

brew install LevelFourAI/tap/levelfour

The tap ships a single levelfour cask, and it installs both binaries: levelfour and l4. Two binaries, same tool covers which name to use.

With a Go toolchain (1.26.3+):

go install github.com/LevelFourAI/levelfour-cli/cmd/levelfour@latest

The binary is named levelfour. Symlink to l4 if you want the short form:

ln -s "$(which levelfour)" "$(dirname "$(which levelfour)")/l4"

go install builds only levelfour. The verify step below and the rest of these docs say l4, so make the symlink or substitute the name as you read.

Archive naming: levelfour-cli_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz (.zip on Windows). Each archive contains both the levelfour and l4 binaries.

VERSION=0.1.0
curl -L https://github.com/LevelFourAI/levelfour-cli/releases/download/v${VERSION}/levelfour-cli_${VERSION}_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
  | tar xz
sudo mv levelfour l4 /usr/local/bin/

Set VERSION to the release you want. The example pulls the Linux amd64 archive.

Checksums for every release are signed under checksums.txt on the Release page.

Verify the installation

l4 --version

l4 version 0.1.0 (commit: 2e84aa4)

A version line is the proof: the shell found the binary and it answered. Your version and commit will differ from the example.

Shell completion

Generate completion scripts for your shell:

source <(l4 completion bash)
# or persist:
l4 completion bash | sudo tee /etc/bash_completion.d/l4 > /dev/null

Updating

l4 checks for new versions in the background after each command and prints an update hint to stderr if a newer release is available. To upgrade:

brew upgrade levelfour    # updates both binaries

CI and Docker images

The CLI is a single static Go binary with no runtime dependencies. To pin a version inside a CI image:

Dockerfile

ARG LEVELFOUR_CLI_VERSION=0.1.0
RUN curl -fsSL https://github.com/LevelFourAI/levelfour-cli/releases/download/v${LEVELFOUR_CLI_VERSION}/levelfour-cli_${LEVELFOUR_CLI_VERSION}_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
  | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin levelfour l4

For a workflow that runs l4, see CI/CD integration.

CLI authentication is how l4 gets a credential, and which commands need a read-write key
Commands is the per-command reference, starting with l4 costs
Recipes has the end-to-end shell pipelines