Octa

A native desktop application for viewing, editing, and querying data files. Octa
opens a file in a spreadsheet-like table with sorting, filtering, and search, and
runs as a single binary on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Files are not read-only. Edit cells in place, insert or delete rows and columns,
find and replace, transform a column, colour-mark cells or flag the ones that
break a validation rule, all with undo, then save in the original format or
convert to another one with Save As.

Any open table, a plain CSV included, can also be reshaped with SQL. The SQL
panel exposes the current file as data and runs your query through DuckDB, so
you can aggregate it, join it against another file, and keep the result as a new
tab or write it straight to a file or a database.

📚 Documentation: https://thorstenfoltz.github.io/octa/

Contents

• What it reads
• Beyond local files
• Installation
  • Arch Linux
  • Linux (and WSL)
  • Docker
  • Windows
  • macOS
• License

What it reads

Parquet, CSV/TSV, JSON and JSON Lines, Excel, ODS, Arrow, Avro, ORC, SQLite,
DuckDB, GeoPackage, SAS, SPSS, Stata, R, HDF5, NetCDF, NumPy, MessagePack, BSON,
DBF, XML, TOML, YAML, Jupyter notebooks, Markdown, EPUB, GeoJSON, Shapefile,
Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, fixed-width text, zip/tar archives, and source code.
Most of those can be written back, and Save As converts between them.

See supported formats
for the full list and what each one can do.

Beyond local files

• Cloud object storage. Browse and open objects straight from Amazon S3 (and
  S3-compatible providers), Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage. Saving
  back is opt-in.
• Live databases. Connect to nine SQL engines and cloud warehouses:
  PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, SQL Server, Amazon Redshift, ClickHouse, Exasol,
  Snowflake, Databricks, and Google BigQuery. Browse tables, query them in their
  own dialect, join them against local files, and (when you opt in) write edits
  back.
• MCP server. octa --mcp speaks the
  Model Context Protocol over stdio, so any
  MCP client can read and analyse your data through Octa instead of a custom
  script.
• Built-in chat assistant. A docked panel where an LLM answers questions
  about your open tabs by driving Octa's own tools. Use a cloud model or run
  fully offline with Ollama.
• Command line. The same binary is a CLI: octa --schema, --head,
  --convert, --sql, --export-schema, and more. octa --help lists them
  all.

Installation

Building from source works on all three platforms: install
Rust, clone this repository, and run
cargo build --release. Linux and macOS need a few native libraries first,
Windows needs a C++ toolchain; the
installation guide
lists them per platform, along with uninstall steps and the first-launch
security prompts on Windows and macOS.

Arch Linux

On Arch and Arch-based distributions (Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Garuda, ...) Octa is
on the AUR, either built from source or as the prebuilt binary. Both install the
man page, so man octa works:

Build from source:

paru -S octa

Or take the prebuilt binary:

paru -S octa-bin

Swap paru for yay or any other AUR helper you use.

Linux (and WSL)

Install the latest release with one command, user-local (no sudo):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thorstenfoltz/octa/master/get-octa.sh | bash -s -- ~/.local

Or system-wide into /usr/local:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thorstenfoltz/octa/master/get-octa.sh | sudo bash

An AppImage and a plain tarball are on the
releases page.

Docker

A headless image ships the CLI and the MCP server:

docker pull ghcr.io/thorstenfoltz/octa:latest

Mount a directory and pass any CLI flag:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/data" ghcr.io/thorstenfoltz/octa --schema /data/file.parquet

See the container docs for
the MCP invocation and Podman.

Windows

Download octa.exe from the
releases page and run it, no
installation needed. install.ps1 (per-user, no admin) or install.bat
(system-wide) set it up properly with a Start Menu entry.

Octa is not code-signed, so Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" on first
launch. It is safe to continue:
how to get past the SmartScreen prompt.

macOS

Download the Octa.app bundle for Apple Silicon from the
releases page and drop it into
/Applications. Intel Macs build from source.

The app is not signed or notarised, so macOS claims "the developer cannot be
verified" (and occasionally that the app is damaged). Neither means anything
is wrong with the download:
how to open it anyway.

License

MIT