Guides

The Nauro app

The Nauro app is a free macOS desktop app and the easiest way to set up Nauro: on first launch, a wizard walks you through connecting a repo and your agents. After setup it is your reading surface for the project record: the decisions live as local Markdown, and the app renders them as a list, a map, a timeline, an activity feed, and the project docs. No account, no cloud dependency.

Download and install

Download Nauro for macOS

Open the DMG and drag the app to Applications; older versions live in the releases repository. For most people this download is the whole setup: the wizard takes it from here.

It requires macOS on Apple silicon (arm64).
The DMG is signed and notarized, so Gatekeeper opens it normally with no right-click workaround.
The app is free under its distribution terms: free to use, and copying inside your organization is allowed. Link people to the official download URL rather than rehosting; public rehosting, modification, and resale are reserved.
It works against the same local store as the CLI. There is no account to create.

First run

On first launch the app offers a setup wizard. It walks you through the pieces the CLI would otherwise handle one command at a time: pick a repo, seed its store, and connect your agents. The wizard drives the same nauro CLI underneath, so the result is nothing app-specific: you get the same local Markdown store and the same agent wiring the manual path produces.

Already set up? The app reads the store you have: open it and pick your project. And if you would rather do everything by hand, the quickstart covers the manual path, from installing the CLI through nauro adopt (or nauro init for a fresh project):

shell

cd my-repo
nauro adopt

The five views

The app renders the whole record five ways:

View	What it shows
List	Browse all decisions with titles, dates, and types, plus status and type filters and project overview stats. A detail pane shows a decision's full record: rationale, rejected alternatives, and supersession lineage.
Map	A force-layout constellation of the whole record. Related decisions cluster; hover a node for its title.
Timeline	Decisions on a date axis, with rows grouped by decision type.
Activity	A feed of agent filings recorded on this machine: propose decision, update state, flag question. Each entry is stamped with client metadata such as `claude-code`, `stdio-mcp`, the client version, and committed status. The app notes that origin is recorded client metadata, not a verified identity.
Docs	The store's project documents rendered readably: project, current state, stack, and open questions.

Search and filters

Quick-open: press Cmd-K from anywhere to jump to any decision or document.
Filters: the List view filters by status and decision type.
Chain-walk: on a superseded decision, “View latest successor” walks the supersession chain to the live ruling.

Updates

The app checks the public releases repository and offers updates when a new version is available. You can also re-download the DMG manually from the same repository at any time.

Relationship to the CLI

For the record itself, the app is read-only: it cannot approve decisions or edit the store, and ratification happens in the agent conversation, as everywhere else in Nauro. Setup is the one place the app acts, and there it runs the same nauro CLI you could run yourself.

Agents still connect through the CLI and its MCP server; the app does not sit in that path. If you remove the app, the store and every workflow around it keep working.

Key facts

What it is: the Nauro app, a free macOS desktop app; the guided setup for most people, and a read-only viewer over the local Nauro store.
Download: a signed and notarized DMG from the public releases repository; macOS on Apple silicon (arm64).
Terms: free to use under the distribution terms; organization-internal copying allowed; link only to the official download URL; public rehosting, modification, and resale are reserved.
Views: List, Map, Timeline, Activity, Docs.
Findability: Cmd-K quick-open, List filters, and “View latest successor” chain-walk to the live ruling.
The record: read-only in the app; ratification always happens in the agent conversation, with no exception. The one thing the app does write is initial setup, where the wizard runs the same nauro CLI you could run yourself.
Setup: the built-in wizard connects a repo and your agents; the quickstart is the manual fallback. No account, no cloud dependency.
Agents: still connect through the CLI and MCP server; the app is a companion, not a replacement.
Updates: the app checks the releases repository and offers updates; manual re-download works too.
Activity provenance: filings are stamped with recorded client metadata (client, transport, version, committed status), not a verified identity.