⚗️ Athanor — AI Workbench (setup)

where modern alchemists cook

setup-athanor is the official installer for Athanor, an AI workbench for developers and creators.

This simple, one-command CLI tool downloads, compiles, and sets up Athanor on your local machine, creating a native desktop application ready for immediate use.

For full details on what Athanor is and how to use it, please visit the Athanor website and its main repository.

What is Athanor?

Athanor is a desktop app for AI-assisted workflows, from coding to technical writing. Athanor does not require API keys.

Open a project folder, select files, specify your task, and quickly create effective prompts with all the relevant context to paste into any LLM chat interface like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Athanor then assists in efficiently integrating the AI-generated responses back into your project or codebase, ensuring you remain in full control of all changes while minimizing tedious copy-paste.

Usage

To set up a local Athanor instance, run the following command in your terminal:

npx setup-athanor [athanor-installation-folder]

• [athanor-installation-folder] is optional. If you don't provide a name, it will default to athanor.

This command will:

1. Clone the Athanor repository (or download a ZIP if Git is not installed).
2. Install all necessary dependencies.
3. Compile a native desktop application for your system.
4. Provide you with a ready-to-use Athanor installation.

Prerequisites

• Node.js and npm: Required to run the bootstrapper and Athanor itself. (Node.js >=18.0.0 is recommended).
• Git: Recommended for cloning the repository with full version history. The tool will fall back to a ZIP download if Git is not available.

How to Run Athanor After Setup

Once the setup is complete, you'll find your compiled Athanor application in the out subfolder of your installation directory. The exact location depends on your operating system:

• macOS: [athanor-installation-folder]/out/Athanor-darwin-*/Athanor.app
• Windows: [athanor-installation-folder]\out\Athanor-win32-*\Athanor.exe
• Linux: [athanor-installation-folder]/out/Athanor-linux-*/Athanor

Simply double-click the application to launch Athanor.

When you first open Athanor on macOS, you may encounter a security warning from Gatekeeper stating that the app "cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer."

To bypass this one-time warning:

1. Right-click (or Control-click) on the Athanor.app file
2. Select "Open" from the context menu
3. Click "Open" in the security dialog that appears

After this initial step, you can launch Athanor normally by double-clicking.

About This Repository

This repository contains the source code for the setup-athanor utility itself. If you encounter issues or have suggestions specifically for this setup tool, please open an issue.

For all matters concerning Athanor—including feature requests, bug reports, and contributions—please refer to the main Athanor repository.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License.