Install paperctl

Install paperctl and verify it’s ready to authenticate. Works on macOS and Linux; no prerequisites beyond a shell and curl.

Install

curl -fsSL https://download.papercompute.com/install | sh

The installer puts paperctl in ~/.local/bin — no sudo, anywhere — and writes a guarded PATH export into your shell rc so new shells find it. If the current shell doesn’t see it yet, open a new terminal or run export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH".

Verify the install:

paperctl --version

You should see the version number, for example paperctl 0.21.1.

The daemon

paperctl does its capture work through a local daemon, paperd. Authentication sets it up, and paperctl init installs it as a launchd agent (macOS) or systemd user unit (Linux) so it survives restarts:

paperctl init

paperctl status shows whether it’s running; paperctl doctor checks and repairs the installation.

Update

paperctl upgrade

paperctl upgrade checks the published version, replaces the binary in place, and restarts the daemon. See CLI command reference.

Migrating from paper

Installed before v0.21.0? The binary was renamed from paper to paperctl, and re-running the installer migrates you: it removes the old root-owned binaries (the one time it still asks for sudo) and lands the new rootless install. Anything that still calls paper — a script, a CI job, a coding agent’s saved instructions — can bridge with alias paper=paperctl until it’s updated.

Uninstall

paperctl uninstall

Removes the binaries, the daemon, the shell rc block, and paper’s local state under ~/.config/paper/.