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Sextant

Installation

Sextant ships three binaries:

  • sextant — the CLI used for ad-hoc grading and by the GitHub Action.
  • sextant-mcp — the MCP server used by Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and any other MCP client.
  • sextant-lsp — the LSP server used by VS Code, Neovim, Helix, and any other LSP client. See Editor integration.

Most users want all three on PATH. The CLI alone is enough for CI; the MCP server alone is enough for AI-agent use; the LSP server alone is enough for editor-only use.

Section titled “Release builds (recommended)”

Pre-built archives for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (x86_64, aarch64), and Windows (x86_64) are attached to every GitHub release.

  1. Pick the archive matching your platform from the Releases page.
  2. Verify the SHA-256 against SHA256SUMS in the same release.
  3. Extract and place sextant and sextant-mcp somewhere on PATH (e.g., ~/.local/bin, /usr/local/bin).
Terminal window
SEXTANT_VERSION=v0.1.0
ARCH=x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
curl -L -o sextant.tar.gz \
  "https://github.com/kylebastien/sextant-mcp/releases/download/${SEXTANT_VERSION}/sextant-${SEXTANT_VERSION}-${ARCH}.tar.gz"


shasum -a 256 -c <(curl -sSL \
  "https://github.com/kylebastien/sextant-mcp/releases/download/${SEXTANT_VERSION}/SHA256SUMS" \
  | grep "${ARCH}")


tar -xzf sextant.tar.gz
install -m 0755 sextant sextant-mcp ~/.local/bin/

Homebrew

Section titled “Homebrew”

A tap is planned for the v0.1.0 release.

Terminal window
brew install kylebastien/sextant/sextant

This will install both binaries.

From source

Section titled “From source”

You’ll need Rust 1.75 or newer. Clone the repo and install the two binaries with cargo:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/kylebastien/sextant-mcp
cd sextant-mcp
cargo install --path crates/sextant-cli
cargo install --path crates/sextant-mcp
cargo install --path crates/sextant-lsp

All three binaries land in ~/.cargo/bin, which rustup puts on PATH by default.

To build the workspace without installing:

Terminal window
cargo build --workspace --release
./target/release/sextant --help
./target/release/sextant-mcp --help

Verify the install

Section titled “Verify the install”
Terminal window
sextant --version
sextant-mcp --version
sextant-lsp --version

If command not found, check that the install directory (e.g., ~/.local/bin, ~/.cargo/bin) is on PATH:

Terminal window
echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | grep -E '\.local/bin|\.cargo/bin'

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”