China setup guide for Browy

This page covers the parts of installation that need extra attention if you are running from mainland China. Browy itself works the same everywhere; the friction is around reaching GitHub Releases and GitHub Copilot from the mainland.

Read this if anything in /install/ times out

The install script downloads a ~145 to 165 MB package from github.com/BrowyHQ/browy/releases. If the download stalls or returns a TLS error, the cause is almost always upstream network quality to GitHub, not the script.

Does Browy work in China?

Yes, with two real-world caveats.

GitHub access

The native-host installer pulls binaries from GitHub Releases. Speeds vary by ISP and time of day. If you cannot reach release-assets.githubusercontent.com, get the release file some other way (a .zip on Windows, a .tar.gz on macOS and Linux) and install from it (see below).

Copilot access

Browy uses your GitHub Copilot subscription. GitHub’s trade controls page doesn’t list China among the places Copilot can’t be sold to. Whether Copilot works for you in practice depends on your network. Calls to api.githubcopilot.com from the mainland have higher latency than from HK / SG.

Recommended setup

1. Use Edge or a recent Chrome. Both ship in China through normal channels and Browy installs on either with the same listing.
2. Sign in to GitHub on your machine before running the install script. The device-flow that grants Copilot access redirects through github.com and is more reliable when you already have a working session.
3. Run the installer. PowerShell on Windows, bash on macOS / Linux. Commands are identical to the global ones, in Install.
4. First chat. Open the side panel, click “Sign in to GitHub Copilot”, complete the device-flow. The terminal closes itself when the token lands.

If the GitHub download is unreachable

The installer has no setting for a mirror URL, but it can install from a file you already have. Everything it needs is on the GitHub release page: the package for your system and the installer script.

System	Package	Installer
Windows (x64)	Browy-<version>-win-x64.zip	install.ps1
macOS (Apple Silicon)	Browy-<version>-darwin-arm64.tar.gz	install.sh
macOS (Intel)	Browy-<version>-darwin-x64.tar.gz	install.sh
Linux (x86_64)	Browy-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz	install.sh
Linux (arm64)	Browy-<version>-linux-arm64.tar.gz	install.sh

The safest route is to download both files on a machine that can reach GitHub and copy them over. Third-party GitHub mirrors and download proxies exist, but I don’t run any of them and can’t check what they serve, so using one is at your own risk.

Put both files in the same folder and run the installer from there. The examples use your Downloads folder and version 0.1.13, so swap in the version and file name you actually downloaded.

Windows

cd $HOME\Downloads
$env:BROWY_LOCAL_ZIP = "$PWD\Browy-0.1.13-win-x64.zip"
Get-Content .\install.ps1 -Raw | iex

With BROWY_LOCAL_ZIP set, the script skips the GitHub version lookup and installs straight from the zip.

macOS / Linux

cd ~/Downloads
BROWY_VERSION=0.1.13 BROWY_LOCAL_TARBALL="$PWD/Browy-0.1.13-linux-x64.tar.gz" bash install.sh

Set BROWY_VERSION as well. Without it, the script still asks the GitHub API for the latest version and stops when it can’t get an answer.

Latency notes

Browy makes two kinds of network calls in normal use.

Call	Endpoint	Where the latency lives
Model inference	api.githubcopilot.com	Round-trip from your machine to GitHub Copilot’s nearest region. From the mainland, this is usually a Pacific hop, and how much delay that adds depends on your network.
Tool execution	Your local machine	No network. The agent runs the tool on the page in front of you.

For most prompts the model call dominates. A chat that fires three or four tool calls in a row will feel a beat slower from the mainland than from HK / SG / EU, but the agent loop does not stall waiting for the network.

Mirroring the source

We do not currently maintain a mainland mirror of the source repo. The GitHub repo is usually reachable from the mainland for code browsing, even when the Releases CDN is slow. If a mainland mirror would meaningfully help your team, please open an issue and tell us which surfaces you would actually use it for. We are tracking demand.

What does not work

A handful of features have hard external dependencies. They will work or fail the same way they would for any user.

• Chrome Web Store install. If chromewebstore.google.com is not reachable, use the unpacked-extension sideload path documented in Install.
• YouTube embeds in the blog. The blog text is the same with or without the video.
• Crash and telemetry reporting. Browy does not send telemetry, so this is a non-issue.

Getting help

Open an issue on GitHub. That’s the place for setup questions and bug reports.