Get started
Valhalla is a desktop app where six AI personas sit at one table, share a library of skills and your own knowledge, and answer in their own voices. This page covers the first ten minutes.
1. Install it
Download the build for your machine. On a Mac, open the disk image and drag Valhalla to Applications. The first time you open it, macOS asks you to confirm: press Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security. On Windows, run the installer. It installs for your user only and needs no administrator password, and Windows may ask you to press More info › Run anyway once. The download page has both in full.
Valhalla carries its own Python, so the only other thing to install is the model you want to talk to.
2. Give it a model
Valhalla ships no model. It drives one you already have, through what it calls an engine. Most people use Claude Code signed in with a Claude subscription. Install it from Anthropic, run claude once in a terminal to sign in, and Valhalla finds it. An Anthropic API key, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint or a local server work too, and the engines page compares them.
Open Settings › Engine (⌘ , on a Mac, Ctrl , on Windows) to see which engines are ready.
3. Start a conversation
The window opens on Home, which shows the members' faces, your recent work and your projects. Home has no text box on purpose. Start typing and a conversation begins with the whole council, or click a face first to talk to one member. A short walkthrough runs the first time, and you can replay it from Settings › Advanced › Window.
Each member answers in turn, in their own voice, with a mark showing who is speaking. If you do not know who you need, ask Mimir, the host.
4. Point it at your code
Choose a repository from the chip in the sidebar. A conversation tied to it reads the branch and the diff with every request, so "review my changes" works without pasting anything, and with the Claude Code engine a member can change files. Every turn is snapshotted first, and the strip under the reply undoes it. For bigger work, give it a project with a mission: see projects and repositories.
Where everything lives
| Path | What |
|---|---|
~/.valhalla/ | Your layer. On Windows, %USERPROFILE%\.valhalla. Set VALHALLA_HOME to move it. |
~/.valhalla/config.json | Every setting, as plain JSON. |
~/.valhalla/mimir.sqlite3 | Conversations, recall, decisions, projects. |
~/.valhalla/personas/ skills/ knowledge/ workflows/ | Your overrides and your own files, one markdown file each. |
<repo>/.valhalla/ | A repository's own layer, meant to be committed. Wins over both of the above. |
Three layers, narrowest wins: what ships, your home folder, the repository.
Updates
Once a day the app asks this site for the newest version and tells you in Settings › Advanced › Window › About. The button there downloads the installer, checks it against its published checksum and opens it. Nothing downloads until you press it, a setting beside it turns the check off, and an upgrade leaves your data alone.