Install ThoughtGate

ThoughtGate has two binaries: the CLI wrapper (thoughtgate) for local development, and the HTTP sidecar (thoughtgate-proxy) for Kubernetes deployments.

Shell Installer (Recommended)

The fastest way to install ThoughtGate:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
  https://github.com/thoughtgate/thoughtgate/releases/latest/download/thoughtgate-installer.sh | sh

Homebrew

brew install thoughtgate/thoughtgate

cargo-binstall

If you have cargo-binstall:

cargo binstall thoughtgate

From Source

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.87 or later
• Cargo (included with Rust)

CLI Wrapper (Local Development)

git clone https://github.com/thoughtgate/thoughtgate
cd thoughtgate
cargo install --path thoughtgate

Verify:

thoughtgate --help

HTTP Sidecar (Server Deployments)

git clone https://github.com/thoughtgate/thoughtgate
cd thoughtgate
cargo install --path thoughtgate-proxy

Verify:

thoughtgate-proxy --version

Build Both

git clone https://github.com/thoughtgate/thoughtgate
cd thoughtgate
cargo build --release

Binaries are at target/release/thoughtgate and target/release/thoughtgate-proxy.

Docker (HTTP Sidecar Only)

Pull the Image

docker pull ghcr.io/thoughtgate/thoughtgate:v0.3.0

Available Tags

Tag	Description
latest	Latest stable release
v0.3.0	Specific version
main-abc1234	Main branch build

Run

docker run -d \
  --name thoughtgate \
  -p 7467:7467 \
  -p 7469:7469 \
  -v $(pwd)/thoughtgate.yaml:/etc/thoughtgate/config.yaml \
  -e THOUGHTGATE_CONFIG=/etc/thoughtgate/config.yaml \
  ghcr.io/thoughtgate/thoughtgate:v0.3.0

Kubernetes

See Deploy to Kubernetes for Helm charts and manifests.

Verify Installation

# CLI wrapper
thoughtgate --help

# HTTP sidecar
thoughtgate-proxy --version

# Health check (after starting sidecar)
curl http://localhost:7469/health

Port Model

HTTP Sidecar

ThoughtGate uses an Envoy-inspired 3-port architecture:

Port	Name	Purpose
7467	Outbound	Client requests → upstream (main proxy)
7468	Inbound	Reserved for webhooks
7469	Admin	Health checks, metrics

CLI Wrapper

The governance service uses an OS-assigned ephemeral port on 127.0.0.1. Override with --governance-port:

thoughtgate wrap --governance-port 9090 -- claude-code

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
Memory	20 MB	50 MB
CPU	0.1 cores	0.5 cores
Disk	15 MB (binary)	15 MB