How LinkCode works
LinkCode runs your coding agents inside a local host process on your machine, and the desktop app connects to it as a client.
LinkCode has two moving parts: a host process that does the actual work, and a client you use to see and control it. Understanding that split explains most of what LinkCode can and can't do today.
The host
The host (the LinkCode daemon) is a single local process that runs on your machine. It starts and manages your coding agents, keeps the state for every thread (a conversation with an agent), and talks to every client that connects to it.
The host listens only on 127.0.0.1 (your own machine), on port 19523 by default. It never binds to a network-reachable address. If that port is already taken by something else, the host hunts upward to the next free one. Every client — today, just the desktop app — connects to this local address to read and drive your threads.
The desktop app connects to the host automatically: it looks for a running host advertised at ~/.linkcode/runtime.json (which records whatever port it actually bound) and falls back to the default port if nothing is advertised. You don't normally need to configure a connection by hand.
Getting the host running
v0 has no installer for the host yet — you run it from a clone of the source repository. See quickstart for the current setup steps.
Clients
A client is the app you actually look at. Desktop is the only client LinkCode distributes today. It's what this documentation describes throughout.
In development
A browser-based client and a mobile app exist in development but are not yet distributed — you can't install or use either one today. Remote access to your host through LinkCode Cloud (for example, from a phone that isn't on the same machine) is also in development. There is no supported way today to use LinkCode from a browser or a phone.
Multiple clients can attach to the same host at once, and they all see the same live thread state — that's the design goal once more clients ship, not something to plan around yet.
Where your code and data live
- Agents run on your machine, against your local files, as the same OS user running the host. Nothing about how they read or edit files goes through a remote server.
- If you configure an API key for an agent, it's stored in a local file —
~/.linkcode/config.json— that only your user account can read. - LinkCode does not upload your code. The host reads and writes files on disk directly; it does not sync your working directory anywhere.
- Nothing in LinkCode requires an account today. A LinkCode Cloud sign-in for the desktop app is in development, and covers account identity only — no LinkCode Cloud feature changes where your code or agent traffic goes.
See local data for the full list of files the host keeps on disk and how to reset them.