Uninstall

Use this page to remove the Coven CLI. A routine uninstall ends after you stop the daemon and remove the installed command. Local state under ~/.coven stays in place by default; deleting it is a separate, destructive final step.

Stop The Daemon First

The daemon holds the local socket and owns running sessions. Stop it before removing the CLI so nothing is left listening:

coven sessions --all --plain
coven daemon status
coven daemon stop

If sessions are still running, let them finish, kill them, or archive them first. Removing the CLI does not clean up a daemon that is already running.

Remove The Install

Remove the CLI using the same method you installed with.

npm global install

npm uninstall -g @opencoven/cli

If you used npx/pnpm dlx for one-off runs, there is nothing to uninstall — clearing your package manager cache is enough to drop the downloaded copy.

Cargo / source build

If you installed the Rust binary with cargo install:

cargo uninstall coven-cli

If you only ran cargo build/cargo run from a cloned checkout, nothing was installed globally; deleting the checkout removes the build tree:

rm -rf coven   # the cloned OpenCoven/coven directory

Native binary

If you placed a native binary on PATH yourself, delete that file from the directory you added to PATH. Then confirm nothing remains:

which -a coven

Verify Removal

Unix-like shells

which -a coven

PowerShell

Get-Command -All coven -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

No output means PowerShell can no longer resolve the command. If a path or command record still prints, another install is still present — remove it with the matching method above.

Local State Is Preserved By Default

Coven keeps local state under COVEN_HOME (default ~/.coven), including session history, events, and the daemon socket. Uninstalling the CLI does not delete this directory. Routine uninstall stops here.

Deleting local state is irreversible

rm -rf ~/.coven permanently deletes your local session history and events. Do this only when you intend to erase all local Coven data, not as a routine uninstall or update step.

Delete Local State Only If You Intend To Erase It

Remove local state only as an explicit final action after the CLI is already gone:

rm -rf ~/.coven

If you set a custom COVEN_HOME, remove that path instead of ~/.coven.

Reinstalling Later

Removing the CLI while keeping ~/.coven lets you reinstall later and pick up your existing sessions:

npm install -g @opencoven/cli@latest
coven doctor

See Install Coven for full install paths and Install Debugging if the reinstall does not produce a working coven command.

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