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BERD TASK · 0001 · SET UP BERD

Install Berd and get through onboarding

Get Berd onto your Mac, answer the four questions it asks on the way in, and arrive on Home with Berdy waiting. Nothing you decide here is hard to undo; the one lasting choice is a toggle.

Steps at a glance

  1. Get the right build
  2. Decide the usage-data toggle before you press on
  3. Pick your work types and meet the recommended agents
  4. Connect a provider now, or skip it for Settings
  5. Land on Home and read the starter tasks

1. Get the right build

Berd is a macOS app first. The current installer for Apple-silicon Macs always lives at one address on the rolling release: https://github.com/block/berd/releases/download/berd-desktop-latest/Berd-latest-darwin-aarch64.dmg. Download it, open the disk image, drag Berd to Applications. Once installed, that copy updates itself from the same feed.

Windows and Linux are a different story. Each versioned release does attach a Windows installer (.exe) and Linux packages (.AppImage, .deb), but they are built with the updater switched off, so you install every new version by hand and the Windows installer shows an unsigned-publisher warning. What a first run looks like on those platforms is not described anywhere in the sources; the Windows document in the repo is a developer verification guide, not a user one. If you are on Windows or Linux, expect to be an early tester rather than a customer.

2. Decide the usage-data toggle before you press on

The first screen says Welcome to Berd. Your place for doing. It carries one control that outlives onboarding: Share anonymous usage data to help improve Berd.

Telemetry is off by default in official builds. If you turn it on, Block receives a random installation identifier and a fixed set of usage events — which features are used, errors, performance. It excludes prompts, messages, files, source code, credentials, names, emails and IP addresses (IP addresses are processed in transit for security and rate limiting, not stored against you). You can change the choice later in Settings, but this is the moment to make it deliberately, especially on a laptop that will hold client material.

[SCREENSHOT: T01-01 — welcome + usage consent]

Berd asks What type of work will you use Berd for? and offers Engineering, Legal, Marketing, Product, Design, Writing and Not sure. Pick more than one if that is true; the answer only shapes which starter agents it recommends.

The next screen shows the recommendation: Planner, Reviewer, Automator and Explorer, each with a one-line job. Keep 'em adopts them; Skip for now does not. Keep them. They are cheap, they are files you can delete later, and the ten built-in agents you will actually lean on arrive regardless — see Cast the right built-in agent.

One caveat. The v0.6.3 release notes say onboarding "now enters Berd directly after the welcome page", and the strings for the work-types and recommendation screens still exist. Whether you see these two screens, or whether their job has moved into Home's starter tasks, is not verified. If they do not appear, nothing is missing.

[SCREENSHOT: T01-02 — work types]

[SCREENSHOT: T01-03 — recommended agents]

4. Connect a provider now, or skip it for Settings

Choose a provider to power Berd is where Berd gets a model to talk to. The list groups model providers and agent harnesses together; Pi joined the onboarding catalog in v0.6.4 with a one-click install. If you have an API key or an installed harness to hand, do it here and Berd confirms {provider} is ready. If not, Skip for now — the same setup lives in the providers section of Settings, and Connect a provider and pick a model walks it through with the error meanings you will want.

Nothing in Berd runs without this step done somewhere: an agent cannot be invoked until it has a provider and a model.

[SCREENSHOT: T01-04 — provider/harness step]

5. Land on Home and read the starter tasks

Home is a canvas, not a chat window. Berdy's callout sits on it (I'm Berdy – your built-in Berd assistant) with two offers: Take a tour and Ask Berdy. Beside it, a starter task list: connect an AI provider, name your first project, add a widget, start a chat. Tick them off as you go; the list can be minimised or dismissed, and the tour can be reloaded later from the canvas controls if you skipped it.

Take the tour once. Five short steps — canvas, providers, chat, agents, skills — and it is the fastest map of the product you will get. Then make Home yours: Make Home yours.

[SCREENSHOT: T01-05 — Home with Berdy callout and starter tasks]

Watch out

The usage-data toggle is the only onboarding choice that sends anything off your machine. Decide it on the welcome screen rather than clicking past it; if you did click past, find it under privacy in Settings and check what it says.

Last checked: Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 — read from source and release notes, not yet tested in the app.

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Reference

Moment
new
Takes
15 min
Steps
5
Verified
Berd v0.6.4 · 2026-09-11 · source-read
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Guide built with Berd, Claude and Codex · verified against Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 · read from source, not yet tested in the app · Buzz Guide · About · not affiliated with Block