Install the CLI

The loofah executable contains both the command-line interface and the MCP server.

Install with one command

On macOS or Linux, run:

curl -fsSL https://loofah.io/install.sh | bash

The script downloads the latest release binary for your platform, verifies its checksum, and installs it to ~/.local/bin/loofah. It also installs fmtr as a compatibility alias for existing scripts and MCP configurations. It never asks for sudo. Set LOOFAH_INSTALL_DIR to install somewhere else; the previous FMTR_INSTALL_DIR name remains accepted.

Supported platforms:

• macOS on Apple Silicon and Intel
• Linux on x86_64 and arm64 (glibc 2.35 or newer — Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, RHEL 9, or later; musl-based distributions such as Alpine are not supported)

Note

On-device transcription (loofah transcribe) runs only on Apple Silicon Macs. Every other command and the MCP server work on all supported platforms.

To upgrade, re-run the script. To uninstall, delete the binary:

rm ~/.local/bin/loofah ~/.local/bin/fmtr

If the install directory is not on PATH, the script adds it to your shell profile (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc/~/.bash_profile, or fish’s config.fish) — restart your shell afterwards. If your shell still cannot find loofah, add it manually:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Caution

Tarballs downloaded from the GitHub releases page with a browser are not notarized, so macOS Gatekeeper blocks them. Use the install script instead — it is the supported download path.

Install it from the desktop app

On macOS, open Settings → Developers and click Install. The app installs the bundled command at ~/.local/bin/loofah — the same path the install script uses, so whichever ran last wins. Both ship the same binary.

Note

The app uses loofah-dev and loofah-staging for development and staging builds, so those channels do not overwrite the stable command.

Build it from source

You can install the CLI directly from the repository:

git clone https://github.com/bart6114/loofah.git
cd loofah
cargo install --locked --path apps/cli
loofah --version

Cargo normally writes commands to ~/.cargo/bin. Add that directory to PATH if needed.

There is no Homebrew formula or Windows package yet.

Connect to the vault

Open the desktop app at least once before using the CLI. By default, loofah looks in Loofah’s application-data directory. If you moved the vault in the app, the CLI follows the vault_path value in global.json.

You can override the path for one command:

loofah --vault-path /path/to/vault --json sessions list

Or set it in the environment:

LOOFAH_VAULT_PATH=/path/to/vault loofah --json sessions list

--base /path/to/vault is an older equivalent, but --vault-path is clearer and takes precedence when both are present.

The CLI reads and writes the vault: loofah sessions new, loofah import, and loofah sessions note --set create and edit meeting data in the same format the desktop app writes, and loofah transcribe replaces a meeting’s transcript. The MCP server stays read-only. See the CLI reference for every command.