Gate × Launchpad — alpha
Gate is the intelligent operating system that runs your business. This page is about running your own copy of it: on your machine, in Docker, under your control. Bring up two and watch them talk.
Wondering how to use AI for your business? Try Gate — start at gate.software.
No download yet — the alpha build is still in preparation.
Apple Silicon · macOS 15 or later · Docker Desktop required.
Before anything else
Two quick questions, so nobody spends an afternoon on an install they cannot use.
Gate is the intelligent operating system that runs your business. If you have never seen it, start there rather than here — running your own copy makes sense once you know what you are running.
Go to gate.software ↗This alpha is for Gate subscribers. Without one there is nothing to sign in to and the instance you build has no plan behind it.
Check your account ↗Both yes? Keep going — the rest of this page is for you. The alpha itself goes out to a small group, so being a subscriber makes you eligible rather than automatically enrolled.
Before you start
Check these first. Launchpad will not install any of them for you, and it will tell you plainly when one is missing rather than failing halfway through.
M1 or later. This alpha does not ship an Intel build.
Earlier versions are not supported by the current build target.
Your Gate instances run as Docker containers. Start Docker before you launch.
Launchpad clones the source you point it at, so your Git access has to reach it.
Free disk and memory requirements are not filled in yet. They need measuring on a clean machine with two instances running, not estimating.
Get Launchpad
The Mac app is the shortest path. On anything else, the command-line tool does the same job.
A notarized Apple Silicon build is not published yet. When it is, this is where the download, its version, date and checksum go.
Download for Apple SiliconThe command-line path needs its exact flags confirmed against a published release before it is printed here. Wrong instructions are worse than none.
Read the CLI guideNothing on this page is downloadable yet. Both paths are blocked on the same release work. The page is here so the words and the journey can be reviewed before there is an artifact to hand out.
Your source
Launchpad builds from a repository and a ref that you pick. It does not quietly swap your source for someone else’s.
Point Launchpad at your own fork if you have one. The repository, the branch or tag, and the exact commit it resolved to all stay visible on the instance afterwards.
Refreshing or updating keeps the source you chose. Moving to a different fork or ref is a deliberate, separate action — never a side effect of an update.
The exact repository and ref to recommend for this alpha is still being agreed. It goes here as one copyable line, quoted from the release, not retyped.
Your first run
This is the whole journey. It is worth doing in order — the second instance is the interesting one.
The app carries its own server. Give it a moment on first launch, and approve the permission prompts it explains as it goes.
Give it a name, point it at your repository and ref, and start it. The first build is the slow one — it clones, provisions, bakes an image and boots.
Launchpad captures a one-time setup link. Open it in a browser to sign in as the instance’s first administrator.
Treat that link like a password. Opening it shows a sign-in page. Confirming on that page is what spends it: you become the first administrator, and every other setup link for that instance stops working for good. Do not paste it anywhere, and do not probe it to “check” it — on some Gate revisions simply loading it is enough to spend it.
Same source, its own name. It gets its own database, its own storage and its own secrets — it is a genuinely separate instance, not a second window.
Complete its first admin login independently, then exercise communication between the two through Gate’s own features.
Running two isolated instances side by side is still being proven. Until that work lands, this page must not promise it. Nobody should read step four as tested.
Known limitations
Read this before you install. An alpha that hides its edges wastes your afternoon.
Remaining limitations get added here from the actual release, including whatever the clean-machine install test turns up.
Release notes
Written for people, not generated from commits: what you can now do, what behaves differently, what is still missing, and anything to watch out for when upgrading.