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Install

Status: Current Last modified: 2026-09-28 08:30 EDT

Everything here comes from the latest release.

Just want to check CHAT files, and you are not a programmer? Get the desktop app below. You never need a terminal.

The Chatter app checks CHAT transcripts in an ordinary window: open a file, see the problems highlighted, fix them, and re-check. No terminal and no setup, and it updates itself when a new version comes out.

macOS

The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens normally (no security warnings).

  1. Download Chatter for your Mac:

    Not sure which you have? Apple menu () then About This Mac: if it says “Apple M…”, it is Apple Silicon.

  2. Open the downloaded .dmg file.

  3. Drag Chatter onto the Applications folder in the window that appears.

  4. Open Chatter from your Applications folder (or Launchpad).

Windows (Intel/AMD 64-bit, “x64”)

Download Chatter for Windows and run the installer. Windows binaries are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn on first run: choose More info, then Run anyway.

Linux (Intel/AMD 64-bit, “x86_64”)

Download Chatter (AppImage) (make it executable, then run it) or the .deb package (install with your package manager).

(The desktop app is x86_64-only on Windows and Linux today; macOS has both Apple Silicon and Intel builds. The chatter command-line tool below also ships a Linux ARM build.)

chatter, the command-line tool (for programmers and automation)

If you are comfortable in a terminal, the chatter CLI validates, normalizes, converts (JSON), watches, and batch-processes CHAT files, and is the right tool for scripting and CI.

macOS / Linux:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/TalkBank/chatter/releases/latest/download/chatter-installer.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://github.com/TalkBank/chatter/releases/latest/download/chatter-installer.ps1 | iex

Then run chatter --help. Full reference: CLI installation and CLI Reference. chatter self-updates with chatter update.

talkbank-lsp language server (editor integration)

For live CHAT validation, hover, go-to-definition, and cross-tier alignment inside an LSP-aware editor (Neovim, Emacs, Helix, Zed, VS Code, and others), install the standalone, code-signed language server:

macOS / Linux:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/TalkBank/chatter/releases/latest/download/talkbank-lsp-installer.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://github.com/TalkBank/chatter/releases/latest/download/talkbank-lsp-installer.ps1 | iex

Or download the per-platform archive (talkbank-lsp-<target>.tar.xz, or .zip on Windows) from the release and point your editor’s LSP client at the talkbank-lsp binary (it speaks LSP over stdio on .cha files, language id chat).

Editor quick fixes do not supply missing participant names, roles or languages. Enter those facts yourself: an undeclared speaker or missing/empty header does not establish the right value. E308, E504 and E507 therefore offer no guessed edit, consistent with the CLI fix policy. Diagnostics remain visible, including parser recovery diagnostics when a malformed header cannot be lowered. Other supported quick fixes remain available.

Rust crates and the grammar (embed in your own program)

To embed CHAT parsing / validation / transformation in your own program, depend on the talkbank-* crates and the tree-sitter-talkbank grammar. They are source-available from this repository (not yet published to crates.io). See Library usage and the CHAT format overview.

As a 0.x release, APIs and flags may change before 1.0; see the Release Notes. For audio + ML pipelines (transcribe, force-align, morphotag), see the upstream batchalign3 project, which has its own installation flow.

This page last changed: 2026-09-28 (commit 2cb42a45). The whole book last changed: 2026-09-28 (commit 046ee726).