Installation

Option 1: Prebuilt binary (recommended)

The fastest way to install. Downloads the latest release for your platform:

curl -fsSL https://isthmus.dev/install.sh | sh

Or download manually from GitHub Releases — pick the archive for your OS and architecture, extract it, and place the isthmus binary somewhere in your PATH.

Option 2: go install

Requires Go 1.25+.

go install github.com/guillermoBallester/isthmus/cmd/isthmus@latest

The binary is placed in $GOPATH/bin (usually ~/go/bin). Make sure this directory is in your PATH.

Option 3: Clone and build

git clone https://github.com/guillermoBallester/isthmus.git
cd isthmus
make build

The binary is written to ./bin/isthmus. Move it to a directory in your PATH or reference the full path in your MCP client config.

Option 4: Docker

docker build -t isthmus .
docker run --rm -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@host.docker.internal:5432/mydb" isthmus

Docker is mainly useful for testing. Most MCP clients expect a local binary they can spawn directly — use one of the other methods for production use.

Verify the installation

# Check version
isthmus --version

# Validate config and test database connectivity
DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb" isthmus --dry-run

The --dry-run flag validates your configuration, connects to the database, pings it, then exits. It is the fastest way to confirm everything is wired up correctly.

Getting Started

Client Setup

Features

Security

Architecture

Option 1: Prebuilt binary (recommended)

Option 2: go install

Option 3: Clone and build

Option 4: Docker

Verify the installation

​Option 1: Prebuilt binary (recommended)

​Option 2: go install

​Option 3: Clone and build

​Option 4: Docker

​Verify the installation

Option 1: Prebuilt binary (recommended)

Option 2: go install

Option 3: Clone and build

Option 4: Docker

Verify the installation