Installation

Three install paths below — pick whichever you prefer.

One-liner

curl -sSf https://keel-lang.dev/install.sh | sh

Fetches the latest GitHub release matching your OS + architecture, extracts it to ~/.keel/bin (or $KEEL_INSTALL_DIR), and adds that directory to your shell rc file if it isn’t already on $PATH.

Homebrew

brew install keel-lang/tap/keel

Works on both macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux. The formula lives in the keel-lang/homebrew-tap repo and is auto-regenerated by the release workflow on every tag — versions and checksums stay in sync with the binaries. brew upgrade keel picks up new releases.

From source

Requires the Rust toolchain (rustup).

git clone https://github.com/keel-lang/keel.git
cd keel
cargo build --release
./target/release/keel --version

Optionally put the binary on your PATH:

cp target/release/keel /usr/local/bin/

Verify installation

keel --help

You should see:

Keel — AI agents as first-class citizens

Usage: keel <COMMAND>

Commands:
  run    Execute a Keel program
  check  Type-check a Keel program without executing
  init   Scaffold a new Keel project
  repl   Interactive REPL
  fmt    Format a Keel file
  build  Stub: bytecode compiler deferred post-v0.1
  help   Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

keel build is listed because the CLI verb is reserved, but v0.1 intentionally returns a deferred-feature error. Use keel run or keel check for current workflows.

LLM setup

Keel’s ai.* functions call a local Ollama instance. It is currently the only supported backend.

# Install Ollama from https://ollama.com
ollama pull gemma4

# Tell Keel which model to use
export KEEL_OLLAMA_MODEL=gemma4

See LLM Providers and Ollama Setup for details.

Editor support

VS Code extension (syntax highlighting + LSP) — maintained in its own repository:

git clone https://github.com/keel-lang/vscode-keel
cd vscode-keel
code --install-extension keel-lang-*.vsix

The Keel Language