Install & setup

Rig ships as a signed macOS app. Download it, move it to Applications, and the setup wizard walks you through the rest.

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1. The setup wizard

On first launch Rig runs a short wizard. It has five steps:

  • TLD picker - the domain suffix for your projects. Defaults to rig, giving you project.rig. Some TLDs are blocked or warned against - see .rig domains & DNS.
  • Package manager - npm, pnpm, yarn, bun, or deno. Only used as a fallback when a project has no lockfile.
  • Folder picker - choose the folders Rig should watch. Discovery runs as soon as the wizard finishes.
  • CLI install - optional. Symlinks the rig binary onto your PATH. Skippable, and available later from the Doctor panel.
  • Done - a summary, then the main window opens.

2. Enable .rig domains

Routing project.rig to your dev servers needs a one-time privileged install - it writes a resolver file and a small helper that owns port 80. This is not a wizard step; you start working immediately and enable it when ready from the Doctor panel → “Enable .rig domains”. You approve a single macOS admin prompt.

Until you enable it, projects are still reachable at their localhost:PORT URLs.

3. Install the CLI

If you skipped CLI install in the wizard, run it from Doctor, or symlink it yourself:

terminal
$ rig install

Then confirm it's wired up:

terminal
$ rig status

Next: Projects & discovery