Muse Code download and install guide: macOS, Linux, and Windows

The “download” is one command

People search for a Muse Code download expecting a .dmg, an .exe, or an app-store page. There isn’t one. Muse Code is a command-line program, and the official way to get it is Meta’s install script. On macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://dev.meta.ai/install.sh | sh

On Windows, in PowerShell:

irm https://dev.meta.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Either script puts a muse binary on your PATH; muse --version confirms it worked. If you’d rather not pipe a remote script straight into your shell, download it first (for example curl -fsSL https://dev.meta.ai/install.sh -o install.sh), read it, then run it. That is the whole download story on every supported platform — what changes is where you run it.

macOS and Linux

On a Mac or a Linux machine, open a terminal and run the curl command above. Two things are worth knowing before the first session:

If muse isn’t found after the install, open a new terminal window so your shell re-reads its PATH.
The first run signs you in. Running muse in a project directory opens your browser to authenticate at dev.meta.ai with a Meta developer account. Credentials are cached, so you won’t do it again every session. On servers, CI runners, and other headless machines, skip the browser: create a key in the Model API dashboard and export it as META_API_KEY, or save it once with muse auth set.

From there, cd into a git repository and run muse. Our getting-started guide suggests a good first task.

Windows: the native PowerShell installer

When this guide was first published, there was no native Windows build and WSL2 was the only route. That has changed: Meta’s documentation now lists a native Windows installer. Meta hasn’t announced the date it appeared (a third-party guide was already documenting it by September 22, 2026), but it’s the official route today.

Open PowerShell and run:

irm https://dev.meta.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Then open a new PowerShell window, check muse --version, and run muse inside a git repository. Muse Code on Windows isn’t identical to the other platforms, though — Meta lists these differences:

PowerShell instead of Bash. The agent runs its commands in PowerShell, so scripts and one-liners it writes for your project will be PowerShell, not Bash.
A UAC prompt on first sandbox init. The first time the sandbox initializes, Windows may ask for permission. That’s expected.
No voice input. Voice is unavailable on Windows.
No inter-session messaging. Sessions can’t message each other on Windows; that feature is macOS and Linux only.

Windows alternative: when to prefer WSL2

WSL2 still works — it’s Linux, so Muse Code behaves exactly as it does on a Linux machine. Prefer it if your project’s tooling assumes Bash, if your team’s scripts are written for Linux, or if you want inter-session messaging. The Windows Subsystem for Linux gives you a real Linux environment on Windows 10 or 11:

Open PowerShell as an administrator and run wsl --install. This installs WSL2 with Ubuntu by default. Restart when prompted.
Launch Ubuntu from the Start menu and create your Linux user.
Make sure the basics are present: sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y curl git.
Run the macOS/Linux installer inside the Ubuntu terminal — the same curl … | sh line as above, not the PowerShell one.
Keep your repositories in the Linux filesystem, for example ~/code, rather than under /mnt/c. Muse Code reads and writes a lot of files, and access across the Windows–Linux boundary is much slower.

If the browser sign-in doesn’t come up from inside WSL, use an API key instead: create one in the Model API dashboard and either set META_API_KEY in your Linux shell profile or store it with muse auth set.

VS Code, JetBrains, and the “desktop app” question

Meta still ships no desktop app, no IDE, and no official editor extension for Muse Code. That doesn’t mean you have to give up your editor:

VS Code: run muse in the integrated terminal. With the native installer, that works directly on Windows in a PowerShell terminal. Only if you chose WSL2 do you need Microsoft’s WSL extension: open your project folder in WSL, and the integrated terminal becomes a Linux shell where Muse Code works normally.
Zed and JetBrains IDEs: community projects bridge Muse Code into editors that speak the Agent Client Protocol (ACP). They are unofficial — check what they send where before you point one at private code.

Be wary of anything advertised as a “Muse Code desktop app” or a standalone “Muse Code for Windows” download. None of those are published by Meta; the two install scripts above are the only official distribution. (Microsoft announced on October 7 that Meta’s consumer Muse agent is coming to Windows as a native app — that’s Muse, not Muse Code.)

Updating Muse Code

You don’t normally have to do anything: Muse Code updates itself. The installer sets up a small launcher that keeps the real binary current, and since CLI 1.4.11 a session that was open while an auto-update landed picks up again with its history. To see where you are, run muse --version and compare it with our changelog — the 1.4 release notes cover the current series. If you want the newest build right now, rerun the same install command; it replaces what’s there.

There’s also no package-manager route to keep in sync. Meta publishes no Homebrew formula, npm package, or winget package for the CLI — the @muse-code/sdk package on npm is the SDK for building your own agents, not Muse Code itself.

Fixing common install problems

muse: command not found after installing. Open a new terminal so your shell re-reads its PATH. On macOS and Linux the installer adds ~/.local/bin to your shell profile; if you use an unusual shell, add that directory to PATH yourself.
Every shell command fails on Linux. The Linux sandbox relies on a bundled bubblewrap helper. Without a working one — including musl-based builds such as Alpine, which ship without it — Muse Code refuses to run shell commands rather than run them unsandboxed. Use a glibc distribution or container.
A Windows permission prompt on first run. The Windows sandbox may ask for administrator approval (UAC) the first time it initializes. You don’t need to run Muse Code as an administrator after that.
Corporate proxies and locked-down networks. Download the script with -o install.sh first so you can see which hosts it contacts, then ask your network team to allow them.

Uninstalling Muse Code

Meta doesn’t document an uninstall command, so removal is manual. On macOS and Linux, the installer puts a muse launcher and versioned muse-bin-* files in ~/.local/bin; delete those, and remove ~/.config/muse/ if you want your settings gone too. On Windows, run Get-Command muse in PowerShell to see where the binary lives, then delete it. Two things uninstalling doesn’t do: it doesn’t cancel a subscription — do that under Subscriptions in Meta’s Accounts Center — and it doesn’t delete project files Muse Code wrote into your repositories, such as AGENTS.md, .agents/, and .muse/.

Then pick how you’ll pay

Installing is free; using Muse Code is not. You can subscribe to a monthly plan — Everyday Usage at $5, High Usage at $15, Power Usage at $50, or Maximum Usage at $200 — or skip the plan and pay per token through the Meta Model API. The pricing page compares both and includes a cost estimator.