Installation

Homebrew (recommended for macOS/Linux)

brew install LevelFourAI/tap/levelfour

This installs both l4 and levelfour binaries.

go install

If you have a Go toolchain (1.25+):

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"

Prebuilt binaries

Each release on github.com/LevelFourAI/levelfour-cli/releases ships static binaries for:

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

Download the archive matching your platform, extract, and place the binary on your PATH.

curl -L https://github.com/LevelFourAI/levelfour-cli/releases/latest/download/levelfour_<version>_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
  | tar xz
sudo mv l4 levelfour /usr/local/bin/

CI / Docker images

The CLI is a single static Go binary (~15 MB) with no runtime dependencies. To use it inside a CI image, copy in the prebuilt Linux binary:

RUN curl -fsSL https://github.com/LevelFourAI/levelfour-cli/releases/latest/download/levelfour_latest_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
  | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin levelfour l4

For GitHub Actions, see the GitHub Actions guide.

Verify the installation

l4 --version

You should see something like l4 version 1.2.0 (commit: abc123).

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

Next steps

• Authenticate and run your first command
• Browse the command reference
• See validated recipes for end-to-end shell pipelines