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Overview

Wolffish is designed to figure things out. It can install missing tools, navigate unfamiliar UI, recover from errors, and adapt to whatever state it finds your machine in. On a normal device, it handles most setup automatically. But “can handle it” and “should handle it” are different things. Every extra step the agent takes costs tokens, burns time, and adds a point of failure. When a heartbeat fires at 9 AM and the agent spends 4 minutes installing Node.js, 5 minutes retrying screenshot permissions it doesn’t have, and 2 minutes navigating to a page you could have left open — that’s 11 minutes of wasted work before the actual task even starts. The mental model: set the desk up before the agent sits down. Pre-grant permissions. Pre-install tools. Leave the right apps open. The less the agent has to figure out, the faster, cheaper, and more deterministic the run. This page covers the general prerequisites and permissions. Each use case also lists its own specific setup — but what’s here applies to all of them.

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macOS Permissions

Wolffish runs as a macOS app. To control your desktop — take screenshots, move the mouse, type, send commands to other apps — it needs explicit permission from macOS. These are not Wolffish settings; they’re OS-level gates in System Settings > Privacy & Security. If any are missing, the agent doesn’t get a clear error. It gets silent failures, blank screenshots, and “not permitted” responses that it retries over and over, burning tokens and time.
What it does: Lets Wolffish take screenshots of your desktop. Required by every capability that uses computer-use.What happens without it: computer_screenshot silently returns nothing — no error, just a blank result. The agent retries up to 10 times, burning ~300 seconds per attempt before giving up. It has no way to know the permission is missing.How to grant it:
  1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording
  2. Click the + button, find and add Wolffish
  3. Restart Wolffish — this permission requires an app restart to take effect
What it does: Lets Wolffish control the mouse and keyboard. Required by every capability that uses computer-use.What happens without it: computer_mouse_click and computer_keyboard_type fail immediately with “not permitted.”How to grant it:
  1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility
  2. Click the + button, find and add Wolffish
  3. Takes effect immediately — no restart needed
What it does: Lets Wolffish send commands to other apps (Chrome, Finder, Terminal, etc.) via AppleScript. Required by computer-use and any capability that drives another app.What happens without it: Any osascript call fails with “Not authorized to send Apple events.” The agent retries — in one test run it burned ~264 seconds on 6 retries before the macOS prompt appeared.How to grant it:
  1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Automation
  2. Find Wolffish in the list
  3. Toggle on each target app — at minimum, Google Chrome and Finder
  4. macOS may also prompt on first use — click “OK” when it does
You can pre-grant these to avoid the prompt interrupting a heartbeat run mid-execution.
Grant all three before your first autonomous run. If any permission is missing, the heartbeat fires, the agent burns through its entire token budget retrying failed tool calls, and you get nothing done. Screen Recording is the worst — it fails silently, so the agent doesn’t even know it can’t see the screen.

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What Each Capability Needs

Not every use case needs every permission. Here’s what to grant based on what your workflow uses:
CapabilitymacOS PermissionsSystem ToolsAPI Keys
computer-useScreen Recording + Accessibility + AutomationChrome (or target browser)Cloud provider (Anthropic or OpenAI)
web-searchNoneNoneCloud provider. Brave Search API (optional — improves quality)
shellNone (runs in Wolffish’s own process)Whatever CLI tools the task needs (git, ffmpeg, etc.)None
browserNoneChromium for Playwright (~200MB, auto-downloaded on first use)None
document, pdf, spreadsheetNoneNode.js (for npm deps)None
githubNoneGit, Node.jsGitHub personal access token
notionNoneNode.jsNotion API key
google-workspaceNoneNode.jsGoogle OAuth (configured in Settings > Integrations)
The pattern: if a workflow uses computer-use, you need all three macOS permissions plus a cloud provider. If it only uses web-search and shell, you may need nothing beyond a cloud API key.

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System Tools

Wolffish auto-installs most system tools when it needs them — Node.js, Homebrew, Chromium for Playwright, etc. On a normal device that isn’t hardened or locked down, this works fine. But auto-installation is nondeterministic. It adds minutes to the first run, can trigger password prompts that stall a heartbeat, and occasionally picks the wrong install path. Pre-installing these tools makes the agent’s environment predictable.

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Node.js v18+

Required by 8+ capabilities (browser, document, pdf, spreadsheet, web-search, github, notion, computer-use) to install their npm dependencies. npm is bundled with Node.js. Wolffish will attempt to install Node.js if it’s missing. But if you use nvm, the Node.js binary may not be on the system PATH that Wolffish sees — the agent might try to install a second copy via Homebrew while a perfectly good one exists under nvm. Pre-verifying avoids this: 
# Check if Node.js is visible on the system PATH
node -v

# If using nvm, make sure the default alias is set
nvm alias default 18

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Homebrew (macOS)

Auto-installed by Wolffish’s package manager if missing, but the installation triggers a password prompt and takes several minutes. If you’re on macOS, install it ahead of time: 
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

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Chromium for Playwright

The browser capability uses Playwright to drive a headless Chromium instance. The first run downloads ~200MB. Pre-install to skip the wait: 
npx playwright install chromium

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Git

Used by the git capability. Pre-installed on most macOS and Linux systems. Verify with git --version.

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Reducing Token Cost and Run Time

Every optimization below saves tokens, reduces wall-clock time, and makes the run more reliable. They compound across daily heartbeat runs.

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Leave the right apps open

If a workflow uses Chrome, leave Chrome open on the target page. The agent skips browser launch, navigation, and page load — saving ~3 screenshots and ~800 tokens per run.

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Keep sessions active

If the workflow needs a logged-in state (LinkedIn, Gmail, GitHub in browser), make sure the session hasn’t expired. A login wall mid-run adds 5+ tool calls the agent didn’t budget for.

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Use a cloud provider for judgment-heavy tasks

Local models (Ollama) work for simple tool-calling workflows, but anything that requires curation, writing, or multi-step reasoning should use a cloud provider. DeepSeek V4 Pro is the recommended default — it matches frontier agentic performance at 29–34× lower cost than Opus 4.7 or GPT-5.5 on output, and ~11× cheaper on input. Use Claude specifically for computer-use tasks or when you need its unique instruction-following style.

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Pre-grant Automation per target app

Each new app Wolffish tries to control via AppleScript triggers a macOS prompt the first time. If you know the workflow drives Chrome, Finder, or Terminal — pre-grant those in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Automation before the first run.
This is about determinism, not capability. Wolffish can install Node.js, download Chromium, handle permission prompts, and navigate to LinkedIn from a cold start. It’s designed to. But a heartbeat that runs in 45 seconds with everything pre-set is better than one that runs in 12 minutes while the agent bootstraps its own environment. Set the desk up. Let the agent do the work.