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Live Environment

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Efrain Restrepo edited this page Jun 20, 2026 · 2 revisions

Live Environment

The HarnessOS ISO boots directly into a fully functional live environment without touching your disk. All changes are lost on reboot.

Booting

  1. Flash the ISO to a USB drive (8 GB minimum, 16 GB recommended): 
    sudo dd if=harnessOS-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync && sync
  2. Boot the target machine from USB. The BIOS/UEFI must be in UEFI mode (not Legacy/CSM). HarnessOS is UEFI-only.
  3. The system auto-logs in as user harness and launches Hyprland automatically.

Default credentials

Field Value
Live user harness
Password (none — passwordless login)
sudo Passwordless for harness

Desktop keybindings

Shortcut Action
SUPER + Return or SUPER + Q Open terminal (Kitty)
SUPER + B Open Firefox
SUPER + E Open VS Code
SUPER + R App launcher (Wofi)
SUPER + C Claude AI in terminal
SUPER + O Ollama (llama3.2) in terminal
SUPER + W Close focused window
SUPER + F Toggle fullscreen
SUPER + Space Toggle floating
SUPER + 1–4 Switch to workspace 1–4
SUPER + SHIFT + 1–4 Move window to workspace
SUPER + H/J/K/L Move focus (vim-style)
SUPER + arrow keys Move focus
SUPER + mouse drag Move window
SUPER + right-click drag Resize window
Print Screenshot (select area)
SUPER + SHIFT + E Exit Hyprland

Top bar (Waybar)

The horizontal bar at the top of the screen contains:

Left side:

  • ⬡ HarnessOS — click to open app launcher (Wofi)
  • Workspace indicators 1–4 — always visible, click to switch (or SUPER+1–4)

Right side:

  • Firefox icon — open browser (SUPER+B)
  • Terminal icon — open Kitty (SUPER+Return)
  • VS Code icon — open editor (SUPER+E)
  • Claude icon — open Claude CLI (SUPER+C)
  • Power button — shutdown / reboot / suspend menu

TUI tools

All lazy TUI tools are pre-installed with shell aliases:

Alias Tool What it does
lg lazygit Git staging, commits, branches, diffs
lzd lazydocker Docker containers, images, logs
y yazi File manager — exits and cds to last directory
z <dir> zoxide Smart cd — learns your most-used directories
top bottom (btm) Process / resource monitor
logs lnav Log file navigator with filtering
k k9s Kubernetes cluster TUI

Other shell aliases available:

ls   → eza --icons         # Better ls with icons
ll   → eza -la --icons     # Long list with git status
cat  → bat --style=plain   # Syntax-highlighted cat
vim  → nvim                # Neovim
d    → docker
dc   → docker compose
dps  → docker ps (formatted)
wifi → nmtui               # Connect to WiFi

Network / Internet

Ethernet auto-connects via NetworkManager. For WiFi:

# Connect to WiFi
nmtui

# After connecting, if Claude/npm tools weren't installed yet:
systemctl restart harness-online-setup.service

Online setup (first boot with internet)

On first boot, harness-online-setup.service runs automatically when network is available. It installs:

@anthropic-ai/claude-code   # claude command
pnpm                        # fast npm alternative
typescript, ts-node, tsx    # TypeScript tools
github/gh-copilot extension # Copilot CLI

Check status:

systemctl status harness-online-setup.service
journalctl -u harness-online-setup.service

Launching the installer

To install HarnessOS permanently on a disk:

harness-install

This opens the TUI installer. Nothing is written to disk until you confirm on the final screen.

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