Deploy Pretense to your team

You need two things:

• An organization license key — Generate one from your org dashboard. It looks like ptns_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx. Every developer on your team uses this same key.
• Shell access for each developer. macOS/Linux get bash. Windows gets PowerShell. The scripts run in user mode — no sudo, no admin.

Paste this into any engineer's terminal. Replace ptns_live_YOUR_KEYwith your org's license key:

export PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY="ptns_live_YOUR_KEY"
curl -fsSL https://pretense.ai/install.sh | sh

What this does, in order:

1. Detects OS + architecture (macOS ARM, macOS Intel, Linux x64, Linux ARM64, WSL)
2. Downloads the latest pre-built binary from GitHub releases to ~/.pretense/bin/pretense
3. Adds ~/.pretense/bin to $PATH
4. Persists the license key to ~/.pretense/config.json (mode 600)
5. Runs pretense --version to confirm the binary works, then verifies the license key against the API

For Windows engineers (PowerShell 5.1+ or PowerShell Core 7+). Same flow, user-mode installer, no admin required:

$env:PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY = "ptns_live_YOUR_KEY"
irm https://pretense.ai/install.ps1 | iex

If your company has restricted execution policy, use the explicit bypass:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "$env:PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY='ptns_live_YOUR_KEY'; irm https://pretense.ai/install.ps1 | iex"

A successful install ends with this on the terminal:

  ok  Binary saved to /Users/jane/.pretense/bin/pretense
  ok  Added ~/.pretense/bin to PATH
  ok  License key saved to /Users/jane/.pretense/config.json (mode 600)
  ok  Binary runs: pretense 0.6.0
  ok  License key verified — /api/cli/log returned 200

  Installation complete!

  Get started:
    pretense init       Scan your codebase and create .pretense/ config
    pretense start      Launch the mutation proxy on localhost:9339

The five green ok lines are the signal. If any go missing or red, see the Troubleshooting section below.

For pipelines that mutate code in CI (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, GitLab, Jenkins), set PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY as a secret and run the install script in a setup step.

jobs:
  scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Install Pretense
        env:
          PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY: ${{ secrets.PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY }}
        run: curl -fsSL https://pretense.ai/install.sh | sh
      - name: Scan for secrets
        run: ~/.pretense/bin/pretense scan .
      - name: Fail if any critical secrets detected
        run: ~/.pretense/bin/pretense scan . --fail-on critical

Recommended sequence for a team of 10+ engineers:

1. Day 0 — Create your org license key via /dashboard/org/new. Store it in your team's password manager (1Password, Vault, Doppler).
2. Day 1 — Pilot with 2-3 senior engineers. Have them run the install script + complete one real mutation pass in their primary repo. Collect any friction.
3. Day 2-3 — Paste the one-liner into your #engineering Slack with the license key inlined from 1Password. Pin the message.
4. Day 4-7 — Drop PRETENSE_LICENSE_KEY into your CI secrets and wire up pretense scan . as a required check on pull requests.
5. Day 14 — Review the org dashboard at /dashboard/org/[slug] — mutations per developer, LLM provider breakdown, secrets blocked. This is your Pretense ROI proof to leadership.