What Rimlight needs

Rimlight drives two tools that run on your Mac under your own accounts: Claude Code and Codex. Check you have everything below before you buy. In the app, Help > Check Requirements looks for each one and says what's missing.

A Mac with Apple silicon, on macOS 26

macOS 26 Tahoe or later, on an M1 or later. Intel Macs aren't supported.

Claude Code, signed in with a Claude plan

Claude Code reads your project, proposes directions, writes every prompt and looks at the renders. Rimlight runs the claude your login shell finds, the same one Terminal runs. Install it with Anthropic's installer, then run claude once and sign in with a Claude plan that includes Claude Code, such as Pro or Max.

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
claude

The Codex CLI, signed in with a ChatGPT plan

Codex renders every image with its image tool, so the ChatGPT plan you sign in with has to include image generation, such as Plus. Install Codex with npm, which comes with Node.js, and sign in:

npm i -g @openai/codex
codex login

ChatGPT plans have a daily image limit. When Codex reaches it, Rimlight stops rendering and shows when the limit resets.

Xcode 26, only for layered builds

Building an Icon Composer .icon uses Icon Composer's tools from Xcode 26 to render the package's appearances. Concepts, sets and refinements work without Xcode. Install it from the Mac App Store.

What you don't need to install

The rimlight command and its Claude Code skill. Rimlight installs both on first launch, the command in ~/.local/bin and the skill in ~/.claude/skills/rimlight, and updates them when the app updates.

What it costs besides Rimlight

Anthropic bills you for the Claude plan and OpenAI for the ChatGPT plan. Rimlight's $5 pays for the app only, and its free version (1 set, 10 concepts, no builds) lets you check that both tools work on your Mac before you pay.