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Install natively#

The one-line installer puts two native binaries on your machine and runs the runtime as an always-on background service. This is the recommended way to use Lens Prism day to day on your own workstation.

  • prism — the terminal UI. Placed on your PATH; run it from any shell.
  • prism-server — the agent runtime. Registered as a background service that starts at login and restarts on failure.

Both are self-contained native executables — no Node.js or other runtime to install.

Install Lens Prism#

To install Prism:

  1. Optional. Export your model provider credential so the installer bakes it into ~/.prism/.env and the service comes up working. For Bedrock:

    export AWS_BEARER_TOKEN_BEDROCK=<YOUR-KEY>

  2. Run the installer.

    curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/prism-agent/main/install.sh | sh

    irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/prism-agent/main/install.ps1 | iex

    To review the installer before running it, download install.sh (or install.ps1), inspect it, then run it explicitly.

If no credential is exported when you run the installer, it writes ~/.prism/.env with empty placeholders — edit that file to add your credential, then restart the service. To change the install directory, set PRISM_HOME before running the installer.

The Windows installer needs no admin elevation and pulls in no dependencies. On Windows arm64 it installs the x64 build, which runs under emulation.

What gets installed#

Item macOS / Linux Windows
Install directory ~/.prism %USERPROFILE%\.prism
Binaries prism, prism-server prism.exe, prism-server.exe
Config file ~/.prism/.env %USERPROFILE%\.prism\.env
Agent database ~/.prism/…/agent.db under %USERPROFILE%\.prism
Shell workspace ~/.prism/workspace %USERPROFILE%\.prism\workspace
prism on PATH via symlink in /usr/local/bin or ~/.local/bin .prism added to user PATH

The workspace directory is the working directory the agent's shell tools operate in.

The background service#

The installer registers prism-server to run always — it starts at login and restarts automatically on failure.

Platform Mechanism Service name
macOS launchd agent com.prism.server
Linux systemd user service prism-server.service
Windows Scheduled Task (runs at logon) PrismServer

Logs are written to ~/.prism/server.log on macOS, and via the service manager on Linux and Windows.

Restart the service#

After editing ~/.prism/.env — for example to add a provider credential or Slack tokens — restart the service to pick up the change:

launchctl kickstart -k "gui/$(id -u)/com.prism.server"

systemctl --user restart prism-server.service

Restart-ScheduledTask -TaskName PrismServer

The .env file is where you set credentials and options. See Configuration for the full list of variables. Restart the service after any change.

Supported platforms#

Native binaries are published for:

  • macOS — Apple Silicon (arm64) and Intel (x64)
  • Linux — x64 and arm64
  • Windows — x64 (runs under emulation on arm64)

Binaries are attached to each GitHub Release. The installer downloads the latest release automatically.

Verify the install#

The runtime listens on port 3003. To check that it's up:

curl http://localhost:3003/health

Then open the web UI at http://localhost:3003, or run the terminal UI:

prism

Uninstall Lens Prism#

Warning

Uninstalling removes the agent database along with everything else, so the agent's memory and history go with it. Export a .prism backup from the web UI first if you want to keep it.

The repository ships a cleanup script that stops and removes the service, deletes the prism symlink only if it points at your install, and removes $PRISM_HOME (default ~/.prism):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/prism-agent/main/cleanup-local-prism.sh | sh -s -- -y

The -y skips the confirmation prompt. With a local clone of the repo, run the script directly to keep the prompt:

./cleanup-local-prism.sh        # add -y to skip the confirmation prompt

There's no cleanup script for Windows — remove the pieces the installer added:

Unregister-ScheduledTask -TaskName PrismServer -Confirm:$false
Stop-Process -Name prism-server -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\.prism"

Then remove %USERPROFILE%\.prism from your user PATH (System Properties → Environment Variables, or setx).