Install the Wanaku CLI

The Wanaku CLI manages Wanaku from the command line. This page shows how to install it and how to make it trust HTTPS endpoints.

Prerequisites

The native CLI binary needs no other software. The JBang and the Java-based distributions need Java 21 or later. To check your Java version, run:

java -version

Installing the CLI by downloading binary

The most recommended method for installing the Wanaku CLI is to download the latest version directly from the release page on GitHub

Installing the CLI via JBang

To simplify using the Wanaku Command Line Interface (CLI), you can install it via JBang.

NOTE

JBang requires Java 21 or later for running Wanaku CLI.

First, ensure JBang is installed on your system. You can find detailed download and installation instructions on the official JBang website.

After installing JBang, verify it's working correctly by opening your command shell and running:

jbang version

This command should display the installed version of JBang.

Next, to access the Wanaku CLI, install it using JBang with the following command:

jbang app install wanaku@wanaku-ai/wanaku-barn

This will install Wanaku CLI as the wanaku command within JBang, meaning that you can run Wanaku from the command line by just executing wanaku.

NOTE

It requires access to the internet, in case of using a proxy, please ensure that the proxy is configured for your system. If Wanaku JBang is not working with your current configuration, please look to Proxy configuration in JBang documentation.

PATH Configuration

If you installed the Wanaku CLI using get-wanaku.sh or the native build (make install), it is placed in $HOME/bin. Many systems do not include $HOME/bin in the default PATH, so you may need to add it manually to avoid a "command not found" error when running wanaku.

To add $HOME/bin to your PATH for the current session:

export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

To persist this across sessions, add the line above to your shell configuration file:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

NOTE

If you are using zsh, replace ~/.bashrc with ~/.zshrc.

Installing with get-wanaku.sh

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wanaku-ai/wanaku-barn/main/get-wanaku.sh | bash

NOTE

This script installs the Wanaku CLI. The wanaku repository has a different get-wanaku.sh script that installs the Wanaku server. Read the Wanaku getting started guide to install the server.

The script detects your OS and architecture, downloads the release archive, verifies its SHA-256 checksum, and installs the wanaku and wanaku-cli commands to $HOME/bin.

• Linux x86_64 and macOS arm64: installs the native binary. Java is not required.
• Other platforms: installs the Java-based distribution under $HOME/bin/wanaku-java, with small wanaku/wanaku-cli launchers. Requires Java 21 or later (taken from JAVA_HOME if set, otherwise from PATH).

Prerequisites: bash, curl, unzip, and sha256sum or shasum. If the release's checksum file has no entry for the downloaded archive, the script prints a warning and skips verification. If the checksum does not match, it aborts.

You can customize the installation with these environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
WANAKU_INSTALL_DIR	$HOME/bin	Installation directory (must be writable by the current user)
WANAKU_VERSION	latest	Release tag to install (for example, v0.2.0). Avoids a GitHub API call.
WANAKU_FORCE_JAVA	false	Set to true to install the Java-based distribution on any platform

For example:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wanaku-ai/wanaku-barn/main/get-wanaku.sh | WANAKU_VERSION=v0.2.0 WANAKU_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.local/bin" bash

Running the script again upgrades or replaces an existing installation in the same directory.

Verify the installation:

wanaku --version

Handling HTTPS connections

Wanaku CLI may connect to either Keycloak or Wanaku MCP server, if their HTTP endpoints are protected by a server certificate (TLS) you may choose to skip the certificate checks or use the CA (Certificate Authority) that issued them on the wanaku-cli so the client can check the server certificate.

1. In wanaku-cli you can skip the checks by using the --insecure parameter, and it's going to print a warning message about it.
2. You can use the CA that signed the Keycloak HTTPS endpoint, by either importing it into the default Java truststore $JAVA_HOME/lib/security/cacerts or have a particular keystore file and use the -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore and -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword parameters to refer to this custom truststore.

You can pass these -D options to the CLI, as in this example:

java "-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=my-truststore.p12" "-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=changeit" -jar quarkus-run.jar  admin credentials show --admin-username=admin --admin-password=admin --keycloak-url=https://keycloak.192.168.49.2.nip.io --show-secret --client-id wanaku-service

Next steps

• Authenticate the Wanaku CLI: log in before you use the CLI with a protected server.
• Inspect tools, resources, and prompts: list what the connected MCP servers expose.