Homebrew distribution for LocalCowork

[pierretokns]

Hi Liquid AI team! 👋

First off — LocalCowork is a fantastic showcase of what LFM2-24B-A2B can do locally. The tool-calling accuracy at sub-second latency is genuinely impressive, and the MCP server architecture is really well thought out.

I'd love to help make LocalCowork easier for people to install. Right now, getting it running requires cloning the repo and installing Node.js, Python 3.12, Rust, Tauri CLI, and several MCP server dependencies manually. That's a lot of friction for someone who just wants to try a local AI agent.

Proposal: Homebrew distribution

Homebrew is the standard way macOS users install software. A brew install --cask localcowork that handles all dependencies would make this much more accessible.

What I've done so far

1. CI/CD for macOS releases — PR Add CI/CD for LocalCowork macOS releases (.dmg) #51 adds a GitHub Actions workflow that builds LocalCowork as .dmg installers for arm64 and x86_64, triggered by version tags. Both architectures build and produce working artifacts.

2. Community Homebrew tap — I've set up pierretokns/homebrew-localcowork as a proof of concept. It:

   • Installs llama.cpp, node@22, python@3.12, and tesseract as dependencies
   • Restricts to Apple Silicon only (per the PRD's hardware requirements)
   • Requires macOS 12+ (per tauri.conf.json)
   • Shows model download instructions (LiquidAI/LFM2-24B-A2B-GGUF / LFM2-24B-A2B-Q4_K_M.gguf) and hardware requirements in post-install caveats

What would be needed for official Homebrew (brew.sh)

To get LocalCowork into the official homebrew-cask repository, two things are required:

1. Signed macOS builds — The .dmg must be signed with an Apple Developer ID for Gatekeeper. Homebrew rejects unsigned apps. This would mean adding APPLE_CERTIFICATE, APPLE_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD, APPLE_ID, and APPLE_TEAM_ID secrets to the CI workflow and configuring Tauri's code signing.

2. Notability threshold — Homebrew requires 75+ GitHub stars, 30+ forks, and 30+ watchers. LocalCowork is new, but given the interest in local AI agents, this should come naturally.

How you could help

• Review PR Add CI/CD for LocalCowork macOS releases (.dmg) #51 — the CI/CD workflow is ready to merge and would enable tagged releases
• Consider code signing — if you have an Apple Developer ID, adding signing secrets to the repo would unblock official Homebrew distribution
• Publish releases — even unsigned releases would let the community tap work immediately

Happy to help iterate on any of this. The community tap is functional today — anyone can run brew tap pierretokns/localcowork && brew install --cask localcowork right now using the builds from my fork.

Thank you for open-sourcing LocalCowork!

[TomLucidor]

Could you get someone else to do the equivalent for Windows (Scoop or Chocolatey I think) and Linux?

[Paulescu]

Thanks a lot for rising this issue @pierretokns and your #51 PR.

Next week I will have some band-with to do a proper PR review, but these are my initial thoughts:

• I like the idea of adding CI/CD with tagged releases, and the ability to brew install. I will probably create an official org tap for Liquid so end users can install Local Cowork as follows

brew tap Liquid4All/tap
brew install --cask localcowork

• I don't think we will sign the releases with Apple Developer ID for the time being.

Talk to you soon!
Wish you a great end of the week

Pau

[Paulescu]

Could you get someone else to do the equivalent for Windows (Scoop or Chocolatey I think) and Linux?

Yes, I think Scoop can be a good option.