---
title: CLI and Agent Relationship
description: How the Wendy CLI discovers devices and deploys apps through wendy-agent
---

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The diagram below illustrates the relationship between the `wendy` CLI on your developer machine and the `wendy-agent` running on your target hardware.

The `wendy` CLI is the developer-facing tool you install on your Mac, Linux, or Windows machine. It handles project scaffolding, cross-compilation, device discovery, and deployment. The `wendy-agent` is a service that runs on the target device and manages the container lifecycle, hardware access (GPU, audio, Bluetooth, GPIO), networking, and telemetry. When you run `wendy run`, the CLI cross-compiles your app, pushes the container image to the agent, and streams logs back to your terminal.

The CLI discovers agents over the local network using mDNS, over a direct USB-C cable connection, or by targeting a remote hostname for devices behind a VPN. The `wendy-agent` comes pre-installed on [WendyOS](../../installation/wendyos-nvidia-jetson-orin-nano/) devices, or you can install it on an [existing Linux machine](../../installation/linux/) (Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS, Debian, Arch, and more). [Headless Mac](../../installation/wendy-agent-macos/) is available as a beta for Apple Silicon Mac targets.

<CliToAgentRelationshipDiagram />