Installation

Grab the latest installer from the Releases page, or pick your platform directly. The daemon is bundled inside the app — there is nothing else to install.

Platform	Format
macOS — Apple Silicon (M1–M5)	.dmg
macOS — Intel	.dmg
Windows 10/11	.msi / NSIS
Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)	.deb
Linux (Fedora/RHEL)	.rpm
Linux (portable)	.AppImage

Prerequisites

• macOS 12+, Windows 10+, or a Linux distribution with the libraries listed below.
• Claude Code installed.
• Node.js 24+ is required by Claude Code itself; the Sentinel daemon ships its own runtime, so you do not need Node installed for Sentinel.

Install

macOS

Open the .dmg and drag Sentinel to your Applications folder.

Release builds are signed and notarized

Official macOS releases are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so they open with a normal double-click — no “unidentified developer” prompt and no xattr workaround. (If you build from source locally, your build is only ad-hoc signed; right-click → Open once to launch it.)

Windows

Run the .msi or the NSIS -setup.exe. Released builds are Authenticode-signed.

Linux

Install the .deb/.rpm for your distro, or run the portable .AppImage.

Required system libraries — webkit2gtk-4.1 powers the app window and libsecret is the keychain backend used to store credentials:

Distro	Command
Arch	sudo pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1 libsecret
Debian	sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 libsecret-1-0
Fedora	sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1 libsecret

Wayland is supported natively — no manual configuration. The app detects Wayland at startup and disables WebKit’s DMA-BUF renderer, which triggers a protocol error (EPROTO) on some compositors.

First launch

1. Launch Sentinel from your Applications folder (or Start menu / app launcher). The tray icon appears in the menu bar / system tray, and the daemon starts automatically.

2. Click “Activate Sentinel” in the banner that appears on first launch. This writes ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:47284 plus OTEL environment variables into ~/.claude/settings.json — the only required setup step.

3. Restart Claude Code. From this point on, every Claude Code session routes through the Sentinel proxy.

4. Enroll accounts via the tray app → Add Account, then follow the OAuth flow. In the browser consent page, make sure you’re signed in to the org you want to add — the token is scoped to whichever org claude.ai is currently showing.

The quick start walks through these steps in more detail.

Verify the daemon is running

The daemon exposes a health endpoint on its proxy port:

curl http://localhost:47284/health
# {"status":"ok","pid":12345}

If this errors or times out, the daemon is not running — relaunch the app, or check ~/.sentinel/daemon.log. The in-app ⋯ menu also shows live pid and uptime.

Uninstall

Open the tray app → ⋯ menu → Uninstall Sentinel…. The dialog lets you choose whether to also delete local data (usage history, rate-limit cache, keychain credentials). Uninstalling:

• Removes the Sentinel environment variables from ~/.claude/settings.json, so Claude Code goes back to calling api.anthropic.com directly.
• Optionally wipes ~/.sentinel/ and every Sentinel-credentials keychain entry.
• Shuts the daemon down and quits the app.

The app itself remains in /Applications (or your install location) — trash it normally to remove the binaries too.