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Helix ships as one binary. It includes the agent runtime, sub-agents (helper agents it starts for parallel work) and the trace viewer, and needs no Node, npm or source checkout.

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Before you start

  • macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) or Linux (arm64 or x64), with curl and bash.
  • An API key or subscription for an LLM provider, such as Anthropic, OpenAI or Google. Helix calls the model with your credentials.
  • No Mutagent account is needed to install or run Helix on your machine.
For coding agents: installing writes a binary to the user’s machine. Confirm with the user first, and do not edit their shell startup files yourself.
1

Install

One command:
Gives you the helix command. It’s proprietary, and it runs on macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) and Linux (arm64 or x64).If you use the mutagent CLI, mutagent install helix installs the same binary.
Don’t pipe a script you haven’t read straight into a shell. Download it first, look at it, then run it:
The installer also keeps a mutagent-helix link to the same binary, so scripts that used the older name keep working.
2

Where the binary goes

The installer puts the binary at ~/.mutagent/bin/helix and links it as ~/.local/bin/helix, creating that folder if needed. When only ~/bin is on your PATH, it links it there instead. If the link folder is on your PATH, helix works in the same terminal.The installer never edits your shell profile. If the folder is not on your PATH, it prints the line to add yourself, and the full path that always works: ~/.mutagent/bin/helix.mutagent install helix installs the same binary. With --json, read binaryPath, version and onPath.
3

Verify

--strict is the real check: it also starts the built-in agent runtime and fails if that doesn’t work. (The installer already checked the download against its published checksum.)
helix --version prints the Helix version and the version of the built-in agent runtime. helix doctor --strict exits 0 when the install works.To check that a provider works, run helix --list-models after the next step: it lists the models your key can use. helix smoke checks that everything bundled inside the binary is present. It doesn’t use the network.
4

Sign in to a provider

The model catalog ships inside the binary, but a model only appears once its provider has credentials. A launch with no provider still renders the dashboard, then warns: “No models available. Use /login to sign in to a provider with OAuth or an API key.” — that is a missing key, not a broken install. (Headless runs exit instead, with “No API key found for <provider>.” followed by the same hint.)Either sign in from inside the session — /login to set up your provider or subscription, then /model to pick a model — or export a key before launching:
AWS Bedrock and Google Vertex credential chains are honoured too. Helix talks to the provider with your credentials; there is no Mutagent inference bill.
5

Launch

Run it in your project directory. You land on the Helix dashboard: the five stages of the agentic development lifecycle (ADLC), the skills (packaged instructions Helix loaded for each stage), and the list of slash commands. Drive it in plain English from there.
That is one of three ways to run it. helix agent (agent mode) gives you a plain coding agent without the five stages, and helix --prime the experimental Prime mode, where the model works by writing and running code. See Three ways to run Helix.

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If it fails

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Update

Re-running the installer command also works and does the same thing. To try a release before it becomes the default, use the preview channel: helix update --channel candidate (or mutagent install helix --channel candidate).

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Remove it

Add --purge to also drop the cached runtime.

Next: three ways to run Helix

The full Helix session, agent mode, or the experimental Prime mode: what each gives you and what to type.