Installation harvey

harvey is a terminal coding agent that runs language models locally. No cloud account or API key required.

Requirements

Go >= 1.26.3
Git
A running model backend — either Ollama or a llamafile

Hardware requirements

Harvey runs entirely on local hardware, so the practical limits are RAM (to hold the model) and storage (for the model files themselves), not just raw compute.

RAM — 8 GB minimum for models up to ~7B parameters (matches the default Qwen2.5-Coder-7B recommendation below); 16 GB or more gives headroom for larger models, or lets a 7B-class model run while leaving RAM free for the rest of your work.
Storage — at least 64 GB free if you expect to try more than one model. Individual llamafiles and Ollama models routinely run several GB each (the Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Q5_K_S.llamafile below is ~5 GB), and Harvey’s RAG stores and session recordings add up over time.
Raspberry Pi — a Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB or more) runs Harvey fine with CPU-only inference; expect roughly 2–10 tokens/s depending on model size and quantization without dedicated AI accelerator hardware. A hardware NPU accelerator (e.g. Raspberry Pi’s AI HAT+ 2) is not currently supported as a backend.

Compile from source

git clone https://github.com/rsdoiel/harvey
cd harvey
make
make test
make install

make install copies the binaries into $HOME/bin/ by default. Override with make install prefix=/usr/local.

Model backend

Ollama (recommended)

Install Ollama from https://ollama.com/download, then pull a model:

ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:7b

Harvey detects Ollama automatically on startup.

Llamafile (self-contained, no install)

Download a pre-built llamafile from: https://docs.mozilla.ai/llamafile/getting-started/pre-built-llamafiles

Recommended: - Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Q5_K_S.llamafile (~5 GB, good for most hardware) - Phi-3.5-mini-instruct-Q4_K_M.llamafile (~2 GB, low-VRAM / CPU)

Place it in ~/Models/ and make it executable (Linux / macOS):

chmod +x ~/Models/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Q5_K_S.llamafile

Harvey finds the llamafile automatically and connects.

Shell completion

harvey can complete its own verbs, options and help topics in bash and PowerShell:

harvey completion bash --install        # bash-completion user directory
harvey completion powershell -install   # beside your PowerShell profile

Without -install the script goes to standard output, for source <(harvey completion bash). Open a new shell afterwards. -install never overwrites a file harvey did not write. This is separate from tab completion of /commands inside a session.

Running harvey

cd ~/myproject
harvey