Install the app

macOSApple silicon

macOS 13.5 or newerVersion 0.7.0

Download .dmg

Windowsx64

Windows 10 or newer (64-bit)Version 0.7.0

Download .exe

Previous releases

The desktop app includes everything it needs to run. You do not need Node.js, npm, a terminal, or a Hansard account. It supports macOS 13.5 or newer and 64-bit Windows 10 or newer. Links that lead outside the app open in your default browser.

Install on macOS

Download the installer above. If downloads for both Apple silicon and Intel are listed, choose Apple menu → About This Mac to see which chip your Mac has.
Open the .dmg file and drag Hansard into Applications.
Open Hansard from Applications, then eject the disk image.

Open the app from Applications, not from the disk image. When Hansard runs from the disk image, setup cannot turn on automatic archiving.

The menu bar dashboard provides quick access to running agents, memory, account usage, and import status.

Open Hansard for the first time on macOS

The first time you open it, macOS asks you to confirm that you want to open an app downloaded from the internet. Choose Open.

If macOS blocks the app:

Try to open Hansard once, then close the warning.
Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
In the security section, choose Open Anyway, then confirm.

When the app archives automatically, it starts the watcher at login through its own login item, so System Settings → General → Login Items lists it as Hansard, and macOS may show a notice that Hansard added a background item.

The watcher reads Documents, Desktop, Downloads, cloud storage folders, other apps’ data, and external and network drives only where macOS allows the Hansard app, so macOS never asks about them in the background. To see what Hansard may read and answer the questions left, open Settings → Imports → macOS access and select Ask macOS.

macOS has no question for Data from other apps, such as Warp’s history, and keeps no answer for it that the watcher could use. That row and every folder you declined offer Open System Settings instead, which opens the pane that holds the switch: Full Disk Access for other apps’ data, and Files & Folders for a declined folder. Turn on Hansard there. The row updates when you return to Hansard. The watcher reads with Full Disk Access after it next starts, for example after a restart or an app update.

Install on Windows

Download Windows x64 above.
Open the installer and follow its steps. It installs for your Windows user without administrator access.
Open Hansard from the Start menu.

Set up your archive in the app

On first launch, Hansard opens a guided setup that fills the window, with one settings card for each step beside a live demo of what it changes. It creates the archive on this computer, then walks through the rest of the app one page at a time. Select Continue to move on, Back to return, or a dot at the top to revisit a page you have already seen.

Welcome and Pick a look: choose a Mode (System, Light, or Dark), a Sidebar theme, and whether to Color the session list.
Find your history: Hansard lists the agents that have history on this computer and how much each holds. Select a tile to leave that agent out. Agents that are installed but have no history yet are grouped under Watch new agents, so their new conversations are saved as they start. Cloud agents already signed in on this computer, such as Claude Code cloud and Codex cloud, have their own switches, and their history imports too unless you turn them off. Under How far back, choose 30 days, 90 days, or All history. Original files stay in place. When an agent deletes old conversations on its own, as Claude Code does after 30 days by default, Keep history for 10 years raises its cleanupPeriodDays setting and saves a backup of the previous settings file. Hansard keeps its own copy either way.
Give your agents a memory: Hansard lists every coding agent it found and adds Hansard to each one you leave on: the Hansard MCP server, the recall skills (recall, deep recall, continue-from, and memory unification), and a session-start hook. What each agent gets lists them. Agents you install later gives agents installed afterward the same tools as soon as Hansard finds them. Skills and plugins from your other agents lets each agent use what the others installed. Nothing is added until the import starts.
What leaves this computer: Redact common secrets hides API keys and tokens in the searchable copy; originals stay unredacted. Claude Code activity keeps Claude Code’s timing and errors on this computer. Track plan usage asks your providers for plan limits, and Check for updates asks npm or hansard.dev for new releases. Link icons fetches icons from sites linked in conversations you open. The watcher starts at login wherever the install supports it.
Make it yours: a tile for each optional feature. Search by meaning, Agent messaging, Helper agents, and Keep history have a switch. Features that need storage, a sign-in, an install, a pairing, or a token, such as Personal Sync, remote access, labeling, web chats, Slack, the account router, and Teams, offer Set up, which adds that feature’s guide after the core steps.
Your work setup: the switches that pause idle agents and resume them where they ran: Pause idle agents, Pause under memory pressure, and Resume for requests.
macOS access, in the Mac app: macOS asks before an app opens folders such as Documents, Desktop, Downloads, cloud storage folders, or other apps’ data. When the history you chose lives there, select Ask macOS to answer each question now, one at a time, so the import never stops to wait for you. Data from other apps has no question: select Open System Settings and turn on Hansard under Full Disk Access. Hansard skips a folder you do not allow until you allow it in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
Build your archive: Hansard shows how much history it found and how much free space the archive needs. Under Recover older history, it offers the recoveries it detected, such as Claude Code files that Claude Code deleted, older Antigravity or Windsurf conversations, and Cursor models and token counts. Select Start import. Conversations appear on screen as they are archived. The import keeps running in the background, so you can continue setup while it works. Meanwhile Stats shows a first look at your Claude Code and Codex history, read straight from their files.

The remaining pages configure a running archive. Each one offers Set up later:

Your agents: under Agents working together, Message board lets Codex and Claude Code sessions message each other, and Subagents in other agents lets them start a subagent in another installed coding agent, such as Grok Build or Antigravity. Claude Code asks before it reads each message from another session unless Accept messages in Claude Code is on. Permission modes says which mode each agent starts in when Hansard continues a session. Each agent uses its configured permission settings. Change permission modes chooses an explicit override for sessions launched through Hansard. Nothing is written until Continue, which applies every choice at once; Set up later leaves the agents as they were.
Personal Sync: copies the archive to a folder or bucket you own, with the same step-by-step storage walkthroughs as Settings → Personal Sync.
Remote access: lets your other computers and a phone reach this one.
Label conversations: labels new conversations by the kind of work they were.
Web chats: walks through adding the browser extension to Chrome, Brave, Edge, or another Chromium browser, pinning it, pairing it with Hansard, and turning on its sites, then waits for the first saved chat.
Slack: creates the Slack app, connects its bot token, picks a channel, and sends a test post.
Account router: chooses how Claude Code and Codex move between accounts. The router can also hold Antigravity, Devin, Grok, Kimi, and Meta accounts.
Teams: creates or joins a Team.

Each page after Your agents is a feature’s guide, and it appears only when you chose Set up for that feature on Make it yours. Finish applies the choices you made along the way.

Steps you leave for later appear at the top of Settings as a setup steps left card. Select it to resume at the first one, or dismiss it. When setup opens another page, such as Accounts for the account router, or when you select Leave setup, a Back to setup item in the title bar returns to the step you left. It stays until you finish setup or dismiss it, and waits while the setup steps left card shows in Settings. In a browser session started with hansard web, the same pages are available at /onboarding.

The first time you open a page such as Accounts, a project overview, Settings → Imports, or Settings → Personal Sync, a short guide introduces it, with rows that sign you in or turn a feature on in place. A guide you finish or skip does not come back on its own. Settings → About → Guides shows any of them again.

If you have a ChatGPT, Claude.ai, or Gemini export, see ChatGPT and Claude.ai exports once the archive exists.

If Hansard is already set up on this computer, for example with the CLI, the app skips setup and opens your existing archive.

Update the app

macOS builds with the native updater check on launch and hourly while open. The updater runs only in an app signed with Hansard’s Developer ID, such as the installer from this page, and checks that signature again before it downloads an update. A locally built app updates through the installer download. When a newer version is available, Settings → About offers Update and restart. The update button above Settings in the dock opens that page and starts the same update. Hansard downloads and verifies the update, replaces the app, and relaunches. Background archiving from the app resumes automatically. Settings → About → Check now checks immediately.

When a restart would stop work, Restart to update? lists it first: agent turns, Deep Recall, classification, and terminals running a program. Agents idle at their prompt are listed separately, and they close when Hansard restarts. Select an item to open its conversation or terminal.

Restart When They Finish keeps the verified download ready and restarts once the listed work ends. Settings → About lists what it waits for, with Stop waiting.
Stop Work and Restart stops the listed work and restarts now. The next start resumes interrupted turns, as described in Resume after a restart.
Close and Restart appears when only idle agents are listed.

You can resume the conversations of closed agents later. Agent sessions whose recall servers run from the app move to the new app on their own. To see what runs from the installed app, run hansard app processes.

On Windows, Settings → About → Check now checks for a newer installer. Updates use a manual download. Wait for imports and agent runs to finish, quit Hansard, and run the newer Windows installer. It keeps your archive and settings. Windows does not use the macOS automatic updater.

The published 0.5.5 app predates the updater. Upgrade it manually once to get this feature. Older shells and releases without signed updater archives keep the installer download flow:

Wait for any running import to finish, then quit Hansard.
If you also use the CLI, stop the watcher:
Terminal window
```
hansard watcher stop
```
Download the new version from this page, open the disk image, and drag Hansard into Applications. Replace the existing copy.
Open Hansard. If the Not archiving new conversations alert appears at the top of the window, select Start.

After an update, Hansard shows New in Hansard once, as a short sequence that shows each highlight in turn and the setup steps that apply to this computer. It runs the steps you chose only at Finish, and a step that fails shows its reason beside Run again. Settings → About opens it again.

After an update, the watcher also brings older archived conversations up to the new release’s files in the background. See Refresh after updates.

Your archive and settings are stored in ~/.hansard on macOS or %USERPROFILE%\.hansard on Windows, outside the app, so an update keeps them. An update replaces the whole app. The CLI, if you installed it with npm, updates separately.

When to use the CLI instead

The app covers reading, searching, stats, memories, and settings. Install the CLI as well when you want to:

add recall to an agent from its own terminal or a script;
import all history after setup, or import from cloud agents such as Devin or Jules;
script Hansard, or run checks such as hansard doctor;
use Hansard on Linux, where the app runs in a browser.

The CLI and the desktop app share one archive. With the CLI installed, hansard app opens the desktop app. If the app is missing, hansard app installs it when your CLI build has a download configured. To install a disk image you downloaded, run:

hansard app install --from ~/Downloads/Hansard-macos-arm64.dmg

On Windows, pass the downloaded installer instead:

hansard app install --from "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\Hansard-windows-x64.exe"

hansard app --no-fallback only opens an app that is already installed. hansard web opens the same interface in your browser.