Run pig either as a native Windows process or inside Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Native Windows uses Git Bash by default for Bash commands and can optionally expose PowerShell to the model. pig inside WSL uses the Linux environment and its Bash installation.

Follow the main Quickstart to install and authenticate pig. Use this page to choose and configure its command environment.

Environment	Command environment	Use it when
Native Windows with Git Bash	Git Bash for the built-in bash tool and ! commands	Your files and development tools primarily live on Windows
Native Windows with the powershell tool	PowerShell for model tool calls; Bash remains available for ! commands	The task depends on PowerShell modules or Windows-native commands
WSL	Linux Bash and tools inside the selected WSL distribution	Your files and toolchain already live in Linux or WSL

For most native Windows users, installing Git for Windows is sufficient.

pig resolves Bash in this order:

1. shellPath from ~/.pig/agent/settings.json
2. Git Bash under Program Files or Program Files (x86)
3. bash.exe on PATH, including Cygwin, MSYS2, or legacy WSL Bash

Start pig and enter this command to verify the shell:

!printf 'Bash is working\n'

If pig cannot find Bash, it reports the locations it checked. Install Git for Windows, put another Bash executable on PATH, or configure shellPath.

The optional powershell tool runs commands through pwsh.exe when available, then falls back to Windows PowerShell. It starts PowerShell with -NoProfile -NonInteractive -ExecutionPolicy Bypass. Administrator-enforced execution policies can still take precedence.

To replace the model-facing bash tool with powershell, add this to ~/.pig/agent/settings.json:

{
  "defaultTools": ["read", "powershell", "edit", "write"]
}

["-bash", "+powershell"] does the same while keeping any other default tools you configured.

Restart pig, then ask it to run a harmless PowerShell command. The ! and !! editor commands continue to use Bash. The powershell tool is available only when pig runs as a native Windows process.

See Settings for other tool combinations.

Set shellPath when Bash is installed somewhere pig does not discover automatically:

{
  "shellPath": "C:\\cygwin64\\bin\\bash.exe"
}

JSON uses backslashes for escape sequences. When you write a Windows path with backslashes, write each backslash twice, as shown above.

See Configure shell commands for command prefixes, aliases, and the complete shell-resolution behavior.

Windows Terminal reserves or rewrites some modified keys. See Windows Terminal to configure Shift+Enter and Alt+Enter, and Keybindings for pig's Windows and WSL shortcut defaults.