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Live Environment

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Efrain Restrepo edited this page Jun 18, 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

Sidebar (Waybar)

The left sidebar contains:

  • HarnessOS logo — click to open app launcher
  • Workspace indicators — click to switch (or use SUPER+1–4)
  • Firefox icon
  • Terminal icon
  • VS Code icon
  • Claude icon
  • Power button — shutdown / reboot / suspend menu

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

If it didn't run (no internet at first boot), install manually:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code pnpm typescript ts-node tsx

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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