Quickstart

You need a Mac, a Linux computer (such as Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora) or Windows with WSL2, with Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode installed and signed in. Everything below runs in a terminal: Terminal on a Mac, or your Linux distribution's shell in WSL. On Windows, install the agent and loadshift inside WSL, and keep your projects in WSL's own folders (such as ~/code) rather than under /mnt/c.

1. Install loadshift

loadshift is a small set of shell scripts. They install to ~/.loadshift and need no admin rights. On Linux they need curl, OpenSSH, git and Perl, which most systems already have.

$curl -fsSL https://app.loadshift.ai/install.sh | bash

If it says ~/.local/bin isn't on your PATH, add the line it prints to ~/.zshrc (~/.bashrc on most Linux systems) and open a new terminal.

2. Sign in

$loadshift login

Your browser opens with a code (from WSL, your Windows browser; without a desktop, open the link it prints). Check it matches the one in the terminal, then approve. The CLI also creates an SSH key (~/.ssh/loadshift_ed25519) and adds it to your account.

3. Start your agent in a project

$cd ~/code/your-app
$loadshift claude     # or: loadshift codex, loadshift opencode

Run loadshift claude, loadshift codex or loadshift opencode in any project, wherever you'd normally start that agent; it starts the agent with any arguments you pass. The very first time, LoadShift sets up your machine and connects to it: you don't create one. That takes a minute or two; the machine is Ubuntu 24.04 with git, Docker, build tools and ripgrep already installed, and SSH to it is set up with its host keys pinned, no password. The first time in each project, it syncs the project to the same path on your machine. Your files stay on your computer; the machine gets a copy without .git, and installs its own node_modules. Commands the agent runs in the project run on your machine, except git and gh, which run on your computer. When a dev server starts there, open http://localhost:PORT on your computer as usual.

With Codex, loadshift adds a hook to ~/.codex/hooks.json that sends Codex's commands to the machine. Codex runs a new hook only after you trust it, so the first time, open /hooks in Codex and trust it.

Every day after that

$cd ~/code/your-app && loadshift claude

If your laptop slept or changed networks, loadshift reconnects on its own. loadshift status shows what's connected; loadshift doctor explains anything that isn't. See Troubleshooting.