Tare docs

Install

Tare installs with a single command. It depends only on a POSIX shell and curl (or wget) — no Bun, no Node, no Git required.

Free trial (no key)

This starts a 7-day full-power trial — real enforcement, real savings, real receipts. On day 8 it settles into a free measure-only mode; it never locks you out.

curl -fsSL https://usetare.dev/install.sh | sh

Licensed (after you buy)

Your license key activates the full tool for good. The checkout success page and your email give you this command with the key already embedded, so you never type it by hand:

curl -fsSL https://usetare.dev/install.sh | TARE_LICENSE=<your-key> sh

Already installed on the trial? You don't need to reinstall — just activate:

tare license <your-key>

The installer wires Tare's hooks and statusline into ~/.claude/settings.json, drops a managed block into your CLAUDE.md, and installs the binary to ~/.claude/tare/bin/tare. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new hooks.

Your first receipt

After a coding session, ask Tare what it saved:

tare today

You'll get the day's ledger — re-reads blocked, output trimmed, shell compressed, and the net saved, measured from your own sessions. For a one-line version suitable for a ticker:

tare today --line

Live savings and rate-limit pacing also render in the Claude Code statusline once installed, so you see Tare working without running a command. If tare today shows nothing yet, you simply haven't run a session with the hooks active — do some work in Claude Code and check again.

Command reference

Run tare with no arguments (or tare --help) to see this list from the tool itself. The current commands:

Tare also exposes tare statusline and tare hook <name> — these are wired into settings.json and run by Claude Code, not by you directly.

Troubleshooting

macOS: "Tare cannot be opened" / Gatekeeper

tare: command not found (PATH)

Tare installs to ~/.claude/tare/bin. If your shell can't find it, that directory isn't on your PATH. Open a new terminal (the installer updates your shell profile), or add it manually, e.g. for zsh:

# add to ~/.zshrc, then open a new terminal
export PATH="$HOME/.claude/tare/bin:$PATH"

Hooks aren't firing / savings show zero

If tare today stays empty after real sessions, the hooks probably aren't wired in. Two commands diagnose it:

tare doctor      # audits your Claude Code setup
tare selftest    # verifies the hook contracts end-to-end

• Make sure you restarted Claude Code after installing — it reads hooks at startup.
• Confirm the hooks landed in ~/.claude/settings.json; re-run tare install if they're missing.
• tare selftest --unit runs the fast unit checks only if you want a quick pass/fail.

Still stuck? Run tare doctor --report and email the redacted bundle it writes (no code, no keys) to tare-support@agentmail.to.

Uninstall

One command reverses the install — it removes the hooks and statusline wiring cleanly:

tare uninstall

Your collected data (ledger, history, experiment state) is kept in ~/.claude/tare so a reinstall picks up where you left off; delete that folder manually if you want it gone. To also remove the Tare-marked skills and subagent presets, add --kit:

tare uninstall --kit

License, devices & refunds

These mirror the Terms of Sale; the Terms are authoritative if anything here is ambiguous.

• Buy once, own it. A perpetual license to the Tare CLI. No subscription, no renewal.
• Price. $49 for the first 100 buyers, then $129. The price you paid is the price you paid.
• Devices. The license covers up to 3 machines at a time. Deactivate one to move the seat to another machine you own.
• Updates. Lifetime v1.x signed updates included — every v1.x release plus certified harness adapters, signed, forever.
• Merchant of record. Purchases are sold through Polar, which handles payment, invoicing, and tax.

Check your current status any time:

tare license --status

How we count

Tare's savings numbers are deliberately conservative and auditable. Here's exactly how they're derived, so you can judge them.

• Bytes to tokens: divide by 4. Tare converts saved bytes to tokens at ~4 bytes per token — a conservative ratio for code and English. Real tokenizers often run denser, so this under-states savings rather than inflating them.
• Measured vs simulated basis. Every ledger entry records its basis: measured (raw and delivered sizes both known), estimated (per-command reduction factors), simulated (what an intervention would have saved), or none (pure observation). Only measured savings feed the headline number.
• Per-day dominant-model pricing. The dollar figure is the API-equivalent value of your measured saved tokens, priced at each day's dominant model's input rate — a reference value, not a claim about your subscription bill.
• Append-only ledger. Interventions are logged to ~/.claude/tare/ledger.jsonl and never rewritten. Audit it with tare evidence.

Compatibility

• macOS — Apple Silicon (arm64) and Intel (x64).
• Linux — x64.
• Windows — via WSL2 (Ubuntu). Native Windows is on the roadmap; the installer will point you to WSL2 today.

Claude Code version. Tare hooks into Claude Code's official hook API. If a Claude Code update ever changes that contract, run tare selftest to check the hooks still pass — and Tare's design is fail-open, so a contract change degrades to no-op rather than breaking your sessions. Our promise: when a Claude Code release breaks something, we ship a fix promptly and it arrives through tare update, signed.

Tare is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic. "Claude" and "Claude Code" are trademarks of their respective owner.