Your antivirus has never heard of the things that actually reach your machine.
Hound blocks a binary before it runs, and reads your lockfiles against 235,577 packages that exist only to be malware. Built for people who ship software, on the machines they ship it from.
$ hound supply-chain ~/src/dashboard ✘ 2 critical, 1 warning across 1,284 packages CRITICAL @vue/cli-plugin-babe1@1.0.2 node_modules/@vue/cli-plugin-babe1/package.json Its "postinstall" step runs automatically when the package is installed — before you have used any of its code — and it downloads a script from the internet and runs it immediately. → Do not install this package. If it is already installed, rotate any credentials it could read. CRITICAL mcp-github-tools@0.3.1 ~/.config/mcp/servers.json Handed GITHUB_TOKEN, and its code is downloaded fresh from the internet on every launch. WARNING CLAUDE.md vendor/awesome-agents/CLAUDE.md Contains instructions aimed at your assistant rather than at you.
The Linux desktop threat is not a Windows virus.
Traditional antivirus databases are overwhelmingly Windows malware — useful if you are a file server passing infections along, irrelevant to the laptop you write code on. What actually reaches a developer machine is a dependency, a model file, or a repository.
Dependencies that are malware
Typosquats, and the newer problem: names an AI invented that somebody then registered. Hound reads your lockfiles — so it catches what will be installed, before the payload runs during installation.
Refused before it runs
Real-time protection that denies execve rather than reporting it afterwards. Built on fanotify, with a watchdog that fails open — a bug in Hound must never be able to freeze your machine.
Weights that are programs
A pickle-based .pt or .ckpt executes code the moment it loads. Downloading weights is a code-execution decision, and Hound reads the opcodes before you find out the hard way.
What changed since last time
Half of a Linux compromise is a line added to a startup file, not a file on disk. Hound keeps a hashed ledger of systemd units, cron, autostart, shell profiles and authorized_keys, and reports what moved.
Code that runs on npm install
A postinstall hook that pipes a remote script into a shell, decodes something scrambled and runs it, or reaches for your SSH keys. It executes before you have used a line of the package.
Questions with factual answers
A process the kernel has but /proc does not list. A setuid binary no installed package claims. Not guesswork against a list of names that only holds on one distribution.
Your assistant can ask Hound first.
Hound ships an MCP server. Point Claude, Cursor, VS Code or anything else that speaks MCP at it, and your assistant can check a repository before it installs its dependencies or starts working in it.
{
"mcpServers": {
"hound": {
"command": "/usr/bin/hound-mcp"
}
}
}
// No npx — nothing fetched at launch.
// No env — no secret handed over.
// No path — no directory granted.
//
// Hound flags all three in other
// people's configs. Ours passes its
// own audit.
Four read-only tools
check_project, check_package, check_file, check_mcp_config. There is no quarantine tool and never will be — an assistant that can be persuaded by the repository it is reading must not be able to make your antivirus delete things.
It audits the tools you already trust
Every MCP server in your config runs with your permissions and gets called without asking you. Hound tells you which ones download their code fresh on every launch, and which ones you handed a token.
Written to be read twice
Once by the model, once by you. No rule identifiers, no jargon, and a clean result says what it did not check — because "nothing wrong" that reads as a blanket endorsement is worse than no answer.
The scanner is free. The blocking and the intelligence are not.
A free tier that cannot protect anything is a bad first impression, so real-time file protection is in the free build. The line is drawn at refusing execution, and at the threat feed.
Free
Everyone. No account, no telemetry.
- On-demand scanning, CLI and desktop app
- Real-time file protection
- Quarantine vault
- MCP server for your assistant
Pro
One machine. For people who build software on it.
- Everything in Free
- Execution gate — refuse a binary before it runs
- Supply-chain scanner with the full feed
- Persistence ledger and rootkit checks
- Signed definitions, updated automatically
Fleet
Up to 10 seats, then $15 per seat. Annual at ten months' price.
- Everything in Pro, on every machine
- Central console, enrolment and policy
- Compliance reports an auditor accepts
- Air-gapped definition mirrors
One command, then it is running.
Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint today. The execution gate ships switched off — it needs root and covers your whole filesystem, so turning it on is your decision rather than the installer's.
Debian, Ubuntu, Mint
curl -fsSL https://dl.houndav.com/deb/hound_latest_amd64.deb -o hound.deb && sudo apt install ./hound.deb
Try it without installing
curl -fsSL https://dl.houndav.com/appimage/Hound-latest-x86_64.AppImage -o hound && chmod +x hound && ./hound status
The AppImage runs as your user and leaves nothing behind. It cannot do the execution gate — that needs privileges an uninstalled bundle does not have — and it will tell you so rather than failing quietly.
You are installing a root daemon that can block execution.
So you should be able to read it. The agent is Apache-2.0 and the definitions are signed with a key whose public half is compiled into the binary — anyone can verify that what they received is what we published. What you pay for is the threat feed, the console and support, not permission to look.