HighwindHighwind

Getting Started

Install Highwind, add your first project and start a service.

Highwind is a macOS app for running a development environment in one window. It starts and stops your dev servers and other processes, shows their logs, and puts embedded browsers and AI coding agent terminals (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, Copilot, pi) next to them in split views.

Requirements

  • macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
  • The agent CLIs you want to use. Highwind can install a missing built-in agent for you from the agent picker.

What you see on first launch

The first launch creates a workspace named "My Workspace" with one empty view, "My View". The Getting Started checklist opens as a tab in the sidebar on the right. It lists things to try, each with its shortcut, and ticks items off when you do them anywhere in the app. Close its tab when you are done. Help → Getting Started opens it again.

Words Highwind uses

  • Workspace: a named group of related projects, such as one product or one client. Workspaces are the tabs in the top row.
  • Project: a folder on disk, usually a git repository. The project menu lists projects with their services and agents.
  • Service: a shell command that runs in a project folder, such as "npm run dev". Highwind starts, stops and restarts it and shows its output. The MCP tools and the REST API still call a service a "project".
  • View: a split layout of panes. Views are the tabs in the second row. A pane can show a service log, a browser or an agent terminal.

Add a project and start a service

1

Add the project folder

Click + in the project menu header next to "Projects" and pick the folder. Highwind shows the run command it found in that folder (package.json scripts, Cargo.toml, go.mod, Gemfile with bin/rails, pyproject.toml or requirements.txt, Makefile) with a box, ticked by default, to add a service that runs it.

2

Add more services if needed

Right-click the project in the project menu and choose Add Service, or use the "Add service" row under a project that has none. The Add Service sheet fills in the folder and the detected command. Leave "Start right away" on to start it when it is added.

3

Open it in the view

In the empty pane, choose Service and pick it, or drag the service from the project menu into the view. The pane shows the live log with start, stop and restart buttons in its header.

4

Start and stop everything at once

Press ⌘S to start every service in the selected view, or to stop them when they are all running. ⇧⌘S restarts the view.

Let an agent set it up

If you connect your agents to Highwind (see MCP Integration), you can open an agent in the project folder and ask it to "add this project to Highwind". It uses the Highwind MCP tools to create the services, links and quick commands.

Where Highwind keeps your configuration

Configuration is stored in ~/.highwind as one JSON file per workspace, project, service and view. You can version it with Git (Settings → Sync), export or import it as one JSON file (Settings → Advanced → Backup), and edit it by hand.