Developer tools

Languages install through mise, the way upstream Omarchy installs them. There is no AUR anywhere in the menus, because this is Debian.

mise and the menu arrive together, on the editions that carry the Omarchy engine: Based Workstation and Based Poweruser, and the unreleased Based GNOME, sway, SwayFX, Hyprland, Plasma and Zorin look. WhiteSur, Chicago95 and SwayOS have neither.

Open the Omarchy menu, then Install, then Development. The menu is Super+Space on both Based editions, and on Workstation a click on the Omarchy tray icon opens it too. Elsewhere, summon that page directly:

omarchy menu summon install.development

What is on it:

row
JavaScript	Node.js, Bun, Deno
Python
Go
Rust
Java
Ruby on Rails
PHP	PHP, Laravel, Symfony
Elixir	Elixir, Phoenix
Clojure, Scala, OCaml, Zig, .NET
Docker DB	MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis or MSSQL in a container

A row disappears once that environment is installed. Remove > Development is the other direction, and it uninstalls every version mise holds for it.

Through the terminal

The menu rows are this command, and you can run it yourself:

omarchy-install-dev-env go
omarchy-remove-dev-env go

Either way it pulls any build dependencies from apt, installs the latest version with mise, and sets it as your default with mise use --global. Rust comes through rustup and OCaml through opam, as upstream does. Frameworks come from their own tool on top: Rails through gem, Laravel through composer, Phoenix through mix.

Open a new shell afterwards, or the new tools will not be on your PATH yet.

mise itself

Once a language is in, use mise normally:

mise ls
mise use --global node@22
mise use node@20        # just this project, in its mise.toml

A project's .tool-versions, the file asdf reads, still picks its versions: mise reads it too. mise checks the checksum of what it downloads, and the signature or attestation where the tool publishes one. Based keeps those checks on, as upstream ships them.

Your shell turns mise on for you, and the graphical session puts ~/.local/share/mise/shims on PATH.

Coming from asdf

Based editions used asdf until 2026-09-26. On a machine that had it, the update installs mise, but your asdf versions don't move over by themselves. mise reads ~/.tool-versions only in your home and below it, so set each version you want everywhere in mise's global config once:

mise use --global node@22

~/.asdf and ~/.tool-versions are left where they are. Once mise ls shows what you use, you can remove asdf:

sudo apt purge asdf
rm -rf ~/.asdf ~/.asdfrc

Keep ~/.tool-versions if you like: mise reads it for everything below your home. The update doesn't. It updates the tools in mise's global config, and a tool only ~/.tool-versions names stays at the version it has.

AI tools

No coding agent or AI app is in the image. Each one installs when you pick it in the menu, from its vendor's own source, into your home directory and for your user alone. None asks for a password. The terminal that opens says where it downloads from, and if the download fails or you are offline it says so and leaves nothing half installed.

Coding agents are under Setup > Defaults > Agent: Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor CLI, Grok, OpenCode and Gemini. All of them are listed whether they are installed or not, and picking one that is missing installs it through mise, the way upstream Omarchy does, makes it your default agent and starts it.

AI apps are under Install > AI. LM Studio and Grok Bot are AppImages, saved to ~/Applications with an entry in your app launcher. A row shows only where the app can run on this machine, and goes away once the app is installed.

Every one of them has a twin under Remove > AI, which shows once it is installed. It removes what the installer wrote: the program, its launcher, and any lines the installer added to your shell's startup files. What the tool saved while you used it, such as your sign-in and settings, stays in your home directory.

Seven are left out of the menu on purpose:

tool	why it is not offered
Ollama	Its installer needs root, adds a system service and a system user, and on a machine with an NVIDIA card changes the apt sources and installs NVIDIA's CUDA drivers.
Hermes	Its installer uses sudo for build tools, clones a branch that keeps moving and edits your shell's startup files, and its vendor documents no other way.
Hermes Desktop	There is no ready-made Linux build. The vendor's way installs build tools with sudo and compiles the app on your machine.
ChatGPT	The only Linux download is a deb that adds an OpenAI apt source, and the source stays after the app is removed.
Perplexity	The only Linux download is a deb plus a vendor apt source, and the app needs an NVIDIA card with 24 GB.
AnythingLLM	Its installer asks to write an AppArmor profile with sudo, and nobody has shown the app starts without one.
OpenClaw app	The app's installer rewrites npm's settings and your shell's startup files, and on an older Node.js adds an apt source.

You can still install any of them yourself from its vendor's page. The menu also leaves out the niche agents Crush, Muse Code, Oh My Pi, OpenClaw and Pi, and T3 Code: the list keeps the agents tied to an account you already have, plus OpenCode as the open one.

Pure Omarchy's Install > AI offers none of the apps above.

Once an agent is in, AI agents covers the MCP servers and skills Based keeps it supplied with, on Linux and on a Mac.

On the developer editions