brnrd

npm install -g brnrd
brnrd --version

That gives you a real brnrd command, and every command in the docs works as written. npx brnrd <command> also works if you just want a look — but npx puts nothing on your PATH, so there is no brnrd command afterwards and every later command has to be npx brnrd … too.

brnrd is a Python program. This npm package is a launcher: on first run it creates a durable virtualenv, installs brnrd from PyPI into it, and hands over. If Python is absent, it downloads a checksum-verified uv and lets uv provision CPython. Every run after that is just a launch.

It exists because brnrd's users already live in npm — that is how the AI coding tools ship — and most of them have Node without having uv or pipx. A launcher that only forwarded to uvx would be useless to exactly the person it was written for.

The install is durable, not ephemeral (~/.local/share/brnrd/venv, or $BRNRD_HOME), so brnrd daemon install works: the service unit points at a directory that will still be there tomorrow. That also makes brnrd account connect a full one-command cold start: bootstrap, pair with brnrd, and start the native service, all in one line.

It never pipes a script into a shell, modifies your system Python, or changes your PATH itself — only npm does, for the brnrd command. An existing Python remains the fast path; an existing uv is used as is; otherwise the launcher fetches a pinned official uv release and verifies its SHA256 before execution. The downloaded uv, managed CPython, caches, virtualenv, and brnrd install all stay under $BRNRD_HOME.

Equivalent, if you'd rather not go through npm at all:

uv tool install brnrd
pipx install brnrd
pip install brnrd

Skip uvx brnrd and pipx run brnrd before daemon install, though: both run from a disposable, per-invocation environment, and the systemd/launchd service would end up pinned to a binary path that vanishes with it. Any of the installs above gives the service a stable target.

Updating: npm update -g brnrd. The launcher's version is the payload's version — a version-pinned brnrd@<version> installs that same brnrd version.

Source and docs: https://github.com/hugimuni-labs/brnrd