Windows and Linux desktop

Download WorkByte

Your own AI provider, your own machine, your own files. Free tier, no card.

Windows 0.7.29 · 26.3 MB, code-signed · Linux 0.7.31 · 19.8 MB

Windows and Linux ship today. Mobile builds aren't available yet — email us if you want one and we'll let you know when it lands.

Download for WindowsDownload for LinuxWhat you'll need

Four steps to your first run on Windows

Then point WorkByte at a folder on your disk. That's your project.

  1. 1
    Unzip it anywhere. There's no installer — the download is a self-contained folder.
  2. 2
    Double-click Start-WorkByte.bat. The first launch sets up the local engine and sandbox. It takes a few minutes and needs WSL2; every launch after that is quick.
  3. 3
    Sign in with Google.
  4. 4
    Add your AI provider. OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq, Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Your key is encrypted before it's stored, and usage bills to your own account — nothing routes through us. You can change it any time in Settings → LLM Provider.

Four steps to your first run on Linux

Then point WorkByte at a folder on your disk. That's your project.

  1. 1
    Extract it anywhere. tar xzf WorkByte-linux-x64.tar.gz — no installer and no root needed; the download is a self-contained folder.
  2. 2
    Run ./start-workbyte.sh from inside that folder.
  3. 3
    Sign in with Google.
  4. 4
    Add your AI provider. OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq, Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Your key is encrypted before it's stored, and usage bills to your own account — nothing routes through us. You can change it any time in Settings → LLM Provider.

What runs where

In the cloudYour account, your conversations and notes, and your project records — plans, milestones and progress. Your provider key, encrypted. And the code search index, which holds chunks of the code in any folder you link.
On your machineYour files and source code, the AI provider you choose, the sandbox that runs media and scripts, and every build

WorkByteBridge ships inside the bundle and starts with the app — it's how an agent reads and writes files on this computer. Until you grant Desktop Access in Settings, the bridge stays read-only.

The security page sets out exactly what is stored where.

Optional: coder tools

If you want agents doing real work on a codebase — go-to-definition, find-references, builds — the app offers to install the coder tools on first use. It's a guided step inside the app, not a separate download.

What you'll need

An AI provider — a key for any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: a hosted provider, something on your own network, or a model running on this machine. Outbound HTTPS only; no inbound ports, no firewall changes.

On Windows

OSWindows 10 (2004 or later) or Windows 11, 64-bit
WSL2Required. The first launch will help you enable it.
Disk25 MB for the app, plus about 1 GB fetched on first run for the local sandbox image

The bundle is Authenticode-signed. Windows may still warn on first run, because the certificate is self-issued rather than from a commercial CA — WorkByte.cer is included in the download if you want to inspect or trust it.

On Linux

OS64-bit (x86-64) desktop Linux with glibc 2.38 or later — Ubuntu 24.04 or newer, for example
LibrariesGTK 3, GStreamer, libsecret and Ayatana AppIndicator. A standard Ubuntu desktop already has them.
Disk20 MB for the app, plus about 1.2 GB on first use for the container engine and the local sandbox image

Updates arrive the same way as on Windows: Settings → Updates downloads and installs the new version beside the old one. The first time something needs the local sandbox, WorkByte offers to set up its own container engine — separate from any Docker you have — and asks for your password once; nothing asks again after that.