Install Crawdad

Crawdad is a small security program that runs on your machine. It sits between your AI agents and the upstream LLMs and inspects every request through a multi-layer detection pipeline before it's forwarded. Metadata-only telemetry (event counts, categories, verdicts) egresses by default, raw content never does. Raw prompts, responses, and action parameters stay on your machine by default, enforced by a sanitization chokepoint in the architecture, not policy. Telemetry depth is customer-governed.

🛡️

Blocks prompt injection attacks

Catches direct and indirect injection before the LLM sees the request.

🔒

Prevents credential and PII exfiltration

Scans outbound responses for API keys, secrets, internal URLs, and 15 PII categories.

📋

Tamper-evident audit log

Every decision recorded locally in a SHA-256 hash-chained, Ed25519-signed audit trail.

How to install

macOS
Linux
Windows
1
Open Terminal, press Cmd+Space, type "Terminal", press Enter.
2
Paste this command and press Enter:
curl -fsSL https://getcrawdad.dev/install.sh | sh
3
You may be prompted for your Mac password, this is normal. The installer writes the signed binary to /usr/local/bin/crawdad-sidecar and registers a LaunchAgent that starts automatically at login.
4
Point your agent at the proxy:
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:7748
5
Open the dashboard at http://localhost:7750. Click Run Test Battery to verify the detection pipeline.

Apple Silicon (ARM64) ships full ML detection, the sidecar downloads the model and libonnxruntime in the background after install, then activates on the next restart. Reproducible score: 99.80% detection / 0.09% FP (1/1,172) on the open 497-attack / 1,172-negative benchmark. Intel Macs run pattern-only because upstream ONNX Runtime has no 1.24+ x86_64-apple-darwin wheel. Full notes at Getting Started.

1
Install with one command:
curl -fsSL https://getcrawdad.dev/install.sh | sh
2
The installer prompts for sudo once to register the systemd user unit at /etc/systemd/system/crawdad-sidecar.service.
3
Point your agent at the proxy:
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:7748
4
Open the dashboard at http://localhost:7750. Click Run Test Battery to verify detection.

Linux x86_64 and Linux ARM64 both ship full ML detection, the sidecar auto-fetches the platform-specific libonnxruntime 1.24.4 tarball along with the model on first run, then activates ML on the next restart. Reproducible score: 99.80% detection / 0.09% FP (1/1,172) on the open 497-attack / 1,172-negative benchmark.

Or download the signed binary directly:

Linux x86_64 AMD/Intel Linux ARM64 Raspberry Pi / AWS Graviton

Native Windows is brought current in 1.7.4 — the full, current product; the build shows an unsigned-app warning on install until our code-signing certificate is in place. Under Enforce mode, Windows applies the mandatory credential broker but has no OS egress lock today (that runs on macOS and Linux).

1
Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator: press Start, type "PowerShell", right-click Windows PowerShell, choose Run as administrator.
2
Paste this command and press Enter:
irm https://getcrawdad.dev/install.ps1 | iex
3
The installer verifies the SHA-256 checksum, writes crawdad.exe to %ProgramFiles%\Crawdad, registers the CrawdadSidecar service (auto-start), and adds Crawdad to your system PATH.
4
Point your agent at the proxy (open a fresh PowerShell window after install):
setx ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL "http://localhost:7748"
5
Open the dashboard at http://localhost:7750.

Administrator is required, the installer declares #Requires -RunAsAdministrator because it registers a service and writes to Program Files. For silent RMM/MDM push, set $env:ENROLLMENT_KEY, $env:CONSOLE_URL, and $env:CA_FINGERPRINT before running the command to auto-enroll into a fleet console. Step-by-step: the install walkthrough.

Want full ML detection on Windows today? Run the Linux binary under WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux): open your WSL shell and run curl -fsSL https://getcrawdad.dev/install.sh | sh, then export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:7748.

Fleet console (MSP / self-hosted)

Managing more than one machine? The fleet console is a single self-hosted binary, no Docker, that runs the operator console and the mTLS device relay with a built-in internal CA. Install it on the host that will manage your fleet (macOS or Linux):

curl -fsSL https://getcrawdad.dev/fleet-install.sh | sh

Run it as your user for a per-user install (~/.local/bin, data in your home directory) or with sudo for a system service (/usr/local/bin, data in /var/lib/crawdad-fleet). On first boot it bootstraps the admin identity and prints your operator login key, a ck_… key shown once. The console listens on https://localhost:9000 and the relay on wss://0.0.0.0:8800. Full walkthrough and the device-enrollment story: Deploy your fleet.

After installing

Open the local dashboard at http://localhost:7750 to see every request inspected, per-layer decisions, and the continuous red team trend. New to Crawdad? The install walkthrough narrates exactly what each installer prints, where the binary lands, and how to confirm it's running. Hit a snag? See install troubleshooting.

Prerequisites