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Windows

Windows support is in beta. The CLI and dashboard work, including local experiment runs and the nanochat demo. The gaps are listed at the bottom.

Prerequisites

Git for Windows is required, and for more than git. It is the only source of the bash and coreutils that orx uses to run experiments — the bash.exe in System32 is the WSL launcher, which cannot see your files, and orx rejects it. Install it with the standard installer so git.exe lands on PATH; orx finds the shell by walking up from there.

You also need a coding agent. Claude Code is the default:

winget install --id Git.Git -e
winget install --id OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS -e
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Open a new terminal afterwards so PATH is picked up.

The nanochat demo installs uv, and with it Python, on its first run.

Install

From Releases, download openresearch-cli-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip, extract it, and double-click orx.exe. It starts the dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:4791 and opens your browser. Leave the console window open — closing it stops the server. If orx cannot start, a dialog says why.

To have orx on your PATH as a command instead, run the PowerShell installer, which installs to %USERPROFILE%\.cargo\bin:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/alphaXiv/OpenResearch/releases/latest/download/openresearch-cli-installer.ps1 | iex"

The SmartScreen warning

orx.exe is not code-signed yet, so Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" on first run. Choose More info → Run anyway.

Signing is planned, but it will not make this go away immediately: since 2024 even an EV certificate has to earn SmartScreen reputation through download volume like any other, so early builds will keep showing the warning.

Long paths

Windows refuses paths over 260 characters. orx passes core.longpaths to git itself, but a deep repository can still defeat the agent or your experiment scripts. If you hit "path too long" from something that is not git, enable long paths system-wide — once, as administrator, then reboot:

Set-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem' -Name LongPathsEnabled -Value 1

Known gaps
orx up --remote-host Refused. The control channel is a Unix domain socket.
Self-update orx update does not work on Windows; re-run the installer to upgrade.
SSH connection reuse Windows' OpenSSH cannot multiplex, so each status or log poll opens its own connection, and the Settings page reports a host as "Disconnected" even when it works. Use a key held by an agent, or one without a passphrase.
The PATH guard Not applied; it needs a POSIX shell startup file.
Data directory Still %USERPROFILE%\.local\share\openresearch, not %APPDATA%.