Install & first run

This page takes you from downloading Tanzanite to watching your first agent run. If you just want the shortest path, the Quickstart is a condensed version; this page adds per-platform install detail and what to expect on first launch.

Note

The images on this page are illustrative placeholders — real captures from the app are on the way. The steps and on-screen labels they describe are accurate for the shipped macOS build.

Install by platform

Tanzanite is a native app. macOS is the shipped platform today; iOS and Android are in progress.

macOS

1. Download the latest Tanzanite build for macOS and open the .dmg.
2. Drag Tanzanite into your Applications folder, then launch it.
3. On first launch macOS may ask you to confirm opening an app downloaded from the internet — approve it to continue.

Tanzanite runs both as a full window and in your menu bar (system tray), so you can leave it running and reach an agent quickly. Leaving the app open also lets cloud projects run their tools on your machine rather than in a cloud sandbox — see How cloud agents run.

iOS and Android (in progress)

Mobile builds are in development. On phones and tablets, agents run entirely in the cloud — there’s no on-device execution or local folder access — so a mobile device is best for kicking off cloud runs, reviewing plans, and approving actions rather than working against local files. When mobile ships, sign-in and projects work the same way described below.

Sign in

Create an account or sign in with email and password, or with Google.

The sign-in screen.

Your account carries your credit balance and projects across every device you sign in on. No credits yet? That’s fine — local projects on the desktop app are free (see Pricing & credits).

Find your way around

The left sidebar is the main navigation, top to bottom:

• Chat — talk to an agent or give it a task (clearing the active project for general chat). See Chat, plans & goals.
• Skills — instruction packs the agent loads on demand.
• Projects — your working contexts (Cloud, Device or Local).
• Host apps — apps you use elsewhere that you connected to Tanzanite, and keys for your own scripts.
• Schedules — run agents on a recurring schedule, or when a commit lands.
• Shared — the share links you generated for artifacts.
• LLM Calls — the full input of each model call, for debugging.
• Account, Settings — your billing and preferences.

Below them the sidebar lists your projects, and Contact support sits at the bottom.

Create your first project

Open Projects and click New Project. Choose:

• Cloud — files hosted by Tanzanite, the AI runs in the cloud; nothing needed on your machine. Cloud runs are paid for with prepaid credits.
• Device — files stay in a folder on this machine, the AI runs in the cloud. Tanzanite opens a native folder picker and requests file-system access to that folder. Your chats and plans still sync to your account, and you can promote it to Cloud later.
• Local — everything stays on this machine, the model included. Free on the desktop app; it can’t be converted to another setup later.

Projects → New Project. See Projects for what each of the three setups means.

Run your first agent

With a project active, open Chat and either ask a quick question or give the agent a goal to start an autonomous run. The agent breaks the goal into steps, calls tools, and can spawn subagents for parallel work.

Entering a goal in Chat.

When the agent wants to take a sensitive action — writing files, running a command — it pauses for your approval. The plan tree shows each step live (reasoning, tool calls, results, and cost), and you can pause, resume with a new budget, redirect, or cancel at any time.

Next steps

• Do something specific with the Task how-tos.
• Hit a snag? See Troubleshooting & FAQ.
• Understand costs and limits in Account, billing & limits.