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Installation

Requirements

  • An Anthropic API key — you need a paid API account to use Claude models
  • For platform PR reviews: a GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket token with read access
brew install critbot/tap/claude-review

This installs a pre-built binary and keeps it up to date with brew upgrade.

Linux / macOS (direct download)

Download the latest binary for your platform:

curl -sSL https://github.com/critbot/claude-review/releases/latest/download/claude-review-linux-amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv claude-review /usr/local/bin/

curl -sSL https://github.com/critbot/claude-review/releases/latest/download/claude-review-linux-arm64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv claude-review /usr/local/bin/

curl -sSL https://github.com/critbot/claude-review/releases/latest/download/claude-review-darwin-amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv claude-review /usr/local/bin/

curl -sSL https://github.com/critbot/claude-review/releases/latest/download/claude-review-darwin-arm64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv claude-review /usr/local/bin/

Option 1 — Direct download (PowerShell) 

# Download and extract
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/critbot/claude-review/releases/latest/download/claude-review-windows-amd64.zip" -OutFile claude-review.zip
Expand-Archive claude-review.zip -DestinationPath .

# Move to a directory on your PATH, e.g.:
Move-Item claude-review.exe "$env:USERPROFILE\bin\claude-review.exe"

Option 2 — Build from source (requires Go 1.22+, see below)

Setting ANTHROPIC_API_KEY on Windows: 

# Current session only
$env:ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "sk-ant-..."

# Persist across sessions (user-level)
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY", "sk-ant-...", "User")

Go install

If you have Go 1.22+ installed, the simplest cross-platform option:

go install github.com/critbot/claude-review/cmd/claude-review@latest

This builds from source and installs to $GOPATH/bin (typically ~/go/bin).

Build from source

Requires Go 1.22+.

git clone https://github.com/critbot/claude-review
cd claude-review
make install   # builds and installs to $GOPATH/bin

Or just build locally:

make build     # outputs to dist/claude-review

Verify the installation

claude-review --version

Set your API key

claude-review requires an Anthropic API key. Set it as an environment variable:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Add this to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or equivalent shell config to persist it across sessions.

For platform-specific PR reviews, also set the appropriate token:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...        # GitHub PRs
export GITLAB_TOKEN=glpat-...      # GitLab MRs
export BITBUCKET_TOKEN=...         # Bitbucket PRs (app password)

Per-project config

You can also set these in a claude-review.config.json file in your project root. See Configuration for details.

Checking your setup

Run a quick test with a local diff:

# Stage any change in a git repo
echo "// test" >> README.md
git add README.md

# Run a review
claude-review

# Clean up
git restore README.md

If everything is working, you'll see a review report written to REVIEW.md.