Garage for Windows alpha

Garage is coming to Windows. The alpha brings the private database, the indexer and the MCP server to your computer, so your AI assistant can search your own files there too.

⏳ The alpha hasn't been posted yet

The download link appears on this page when the first Windows build is ready. To hear about it, watch the repository on GitHub (Watch → Custom → Releases). In the meantime, Garage runs on a Mac and from the command line on Linux.

Where the Windows version stands

PostgreSQL with pgvector, Python and the Garage pipeline already build from source on Windows, and every push to main runs the database tests against that Windows build. That’s the core the alpha ships: the same indexer, hybrid search and MCP server as the Mac app.

The alpha is for people who are comfortable with rough edges:

Expect a command line first. The Mac app’s menu-bar window, first-run assistant and one-click assistant connections are Mac-only for now. You drive the alpha with garage and garage-mcp, as on Linux.
Bring your own model server. The Mac’s built-in llama.cpp engine isn’t in the alpha. Run Ollama or LM Studio for embeddings and answers, on this computer or on another machine you run.
Mac-only sources stay Mac-only. Apple Messages, Apple Mail and HEIC photos need a Mac. Folders, git repositories, Markdown, PDF, Office documents, code and .eml mail work everywhere.
Things may change between builds, including where data is kept. Back up anything you can’t re-index.

Before you start

64-bit Windows (x64).
Ollama or LM Studio, with an embedding model such as bge-m3.
An MCP client: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed or LM Studio.

Install and set up

Download the alpha from this page once it’s posted, and follow the install steps in the release notes. Builds are early, so the steps can change from one to the next.

Initialize Garage, register a model and add a folder:

garage config init --user
garage config set facts.provider ollama
garage init-db
garage register-model bge-m3 --provider ollama --dims 1024 --default
garage add-source notes "$HOME\Documents\Notes" --class document --trust authored
garage ingest
garage backfill

Connect your assistant with garage mcp-install --target claude-desktop (or cursor, vscode, claude-code-user, …), then ask it about your files.

The user guide explains each command and setting.

Tell us what you find

Alpha testers shape the Windows version. When something breaks or feels wrong, open an issue on GitHub with your Windows version, the Garage build, what you did and what happened, plus any error output. The contact page has a checklist. Fixes are welcome too: see how to contribute.

🛡️ Same privacy, every platform

On Windows as on a Mac, Garage uploads nothing. Content goes only to the model server you configure, and communications such as mail never leave this computer. The same code enforces it on every platform; see how it works.