Installation

diffle ships as a single self-contained binary: it embeds its own web client and needs no checkout, no Node, and no sidecar files. It does need git on your PATH — that’s the only prerequisite.

Install

macOS / Linux

curl -fsSL https://diffle.dev/install | sh

Windows

irm https://diffle.dev/install.ps1 | iex

The installer downloads the binary for your OS and architecture, verifies its SHA-256 against the published checksum manifest, and installs it to ~/.diffle/bin — and adds that directory to your PATH for you.

Custom location

Set DIFFLE_INSTALL_DIR before running the installer to choose a different directory.

PATH on macOS / Linux

The installer appends a marked block to your login shell’s rc file — .zshrc for zsh, .bashrc for bash (plus a .bash_profile that sources it on macOS), config.fish for fish, .profile for anything else:

# >>> diffle >>>
export PATH="$HOME/.diffle/bin:$PATH"
# <<< diffle <<<

Nothing else in the file is reordered or rewritten, the file is copied to <rc>.diffle.bak-<timestamp> before the first edit, and re-running the installer is a no-op. A child process can’t change the shell that launched it, so run exec $SHELL -l (fish: source <rc>) to use diffle right away — new shells pick it up on their own.

Set DIFFLE_NO_MODIFY_PATH=1 to skip the rc edit and print the export line instead, or DIFFLE_DRY_RUN=1 to log every intended change without writing anything.

Windows PATH

install.ps1 needs PowerShell 7 or newer. It edits only your user PATH (never the machine scope, and never the merged process value), backs the old value up to a timestamped file first, preserves every existing entry — %VAR% tokens included — and does nothing if ~\.diffle\bin is already there. Set DIFFLE_NO_MODIFY_PATH to install without touching PATH, or DIFFLE_DRY_RUN to print the plan and write nothing.

Verify

1. Open a new terminal so PATH changes take effect.

2. Check the version:

   diffle --version

3. From any git repository, start a review:

   diffle

   diffle prints a http://localhost:<port> URL and opens it in your browser.

Keep it current

diffle update

diffle update downloads the latest release, verifies its checksum, and swaps the binary in place (on Windows the swap completes as the process exits). If a package manager installed diffle, it prints that manager’s upgrade command instead.

Uninstall

Remove the binary, and optionally your data directory:

macOS / Linux

curl -fsSL https://diffle.dev/install | DIFFLE_UNINSTALL=1 sh   # binary + PATH block
rm -rf ~/.diffle                                                # also removes review records + settings

The uninstall step removes the # >>> diffle >>> block from your rc file and leaves the rest byte-identical. If you already have the script on disk, sh install.sh --uninstall does the same thing.

Windows

$env:DIFFLE_UNINSTALL = 1                 # the binary, and its user PATH entry
irm https://diffle.dev/install.ps1 | iex
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force ~/.diffle     # also removes review records + settings

From source (contributors)

diffle’s server, CLI, and MCP runtime run on Bun; the client is a built Svelte SPA.

git clone https://github.com/codywilliamson/diffle
cd diffle
bun install
bun run dev        # backend + Vite with /api proxied

Upgrading from loupe

diffle was previously loupe. The loupe command, LOUPE_* environment variables, and an existing ~/.loupe data directory keep working for one release — see Migrating from loupe.