Update & Channels

Ante ships as a single binary and updates itself in place — the same install.sh script that performs the first install is re-run by ante update against the channel this binary tracks.

Update

Check for a newer Ante release on your current channel and install it if one is available:

ante update

If a newer version exists, Ante runs the installer for the same channel and prints the new version once it is in place. Restart Ante to start using it.

If you are already on the latest version, Ante prints a confirmation and exits without touching the binary.

Channels

A release channel is a named track of builds. Ante publishes two:

Channel	Description
stable	Recommended for daily use. Tagged releases published from the release workflow.
nightly	Built from the development branch. New features and bugs land here first.

The default channel is stable. The channel a binary tracks is stored in ~/.ante/settings.json under the channel field — ante update reads this on every run, and the in-app update prompt uses the same setting.

{
  "channel": "nightly"
}

Setting channel to an empty string or omitting it falls back to stable.

Switching channels

Pass a channel as a positional argument or as --channel:

# Positional form
ante update nightly

# Flag form
ante update --channel nightly

Both forms fetch the manifest for the requested channel and run the installer against it. The override applies to that single update — to make the switch persistent so future ante update runs follow the new channel, edit ~/.ante/settings.json and set "channel": "nightly".

Channel names may only contain ASCII letters, numbers, ., _, or -.

Initial install

The installer accepts the same channel names. To install a non-default channel from a fresh machine:

curl -fsSL https://ante.run/install.sh | bash -s -- nightly

Without an argument, the installer uses stable.

How update checks work

On launch, Ante runs a background check against the channel manifest at most once every six hours and caches the result in ~/.ante/versions.json. When a newer version is available, the TUI surfaces an update prompt with the release notes; dismissing a version skips it until a newer one lands. ante update ignores the cache and always fetches the manifest fresh.