magpie WSL setup and Windows install: where to run it (November 2026)

Yes. As of 2026-11-10 the README says that on Windows, agents inside WSL distros are wired too, and their sessions counted. magpie scans only running distros and never starts a stopped one when listing; with Detect agents in WSL off in Settings, magpie starts no wsl.exe at all. The reference also describes magpie daemon and magpie web working inside WSL.

The maintainer, yetone, wrote on issue #2198 that the fix is merged and ships in v0.1.1763, so first make sure magpie on Windows is on that version or later. #2198 describes a Codex wired inside a WSL distro that asks for a model magpie does not serve and gets a 404. With the fix, when the Windows Codex gives no stand-in model, magpie reads the first running distro whose config.toml has model_provider = "magpie" and uses its model. The issue is still open (reopened): yetone wrote that a real Codex in a real distro had not been tried, and the issue waits for someone with a real WSL setup.

To have magpie start no wsl.exe at all, the official docs give a switch: turn off Detect agents in WSL in Settings, which also stops it looking for agents in WSL. The behavior is the subject of issue #3175: on 2026-10-21 its reporter wrote that after wsl --shutdown, magpie.exe called wsl.exe about every 60 seconds and the distro came back to Running, and asked for a switch or a lower frequency; on 2026-10-22 he closed it himself as completed, with no comment. Today's wiring notes say each running distro is scanned once and a stopped one is never started. How the two relate is not stated officially.

That is issue #3689, open as of 2026-11-10, with no maintainer reply or official procedure yet. Observations from an issue contributor: the reporter's Copilot model address in VS Code was 127.0.0.1:3425, and the VS Code server in WSL failed with connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:3425; he later wrote that Mirrored networking works and NAT does not, and that turning on magpie's local network sharing and entering the Windows host's IP and a gateway key in VS Code by hand worked, but the reconnect button in the Agents panel writes VS Code's old settings back. For NAT, the official docs say the WSL agents magpie wires use Windows' address on the WSL network, and Windows' firewall decides whether they get in.

As of 2026-11-10 the official docs give the addresses for mirrored, NAT and bridged networking; WSL1 is still under discussion in issue #3333 (open), with no maintainer reply yet. The reporter could reach curl http://127.0.0.1:3425/v1/models from WSL1, but magpie wrote a non-loopback address into Claude Code's ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL. Observation from an issue contributor: WSL 1 shares Windows' network stack, so the address should be 127.0.0.1; he published a patch and notes he did not test it on a real WSL1 distro.

Yes. Add QCode as a provider with the three addresses from QCode's magpie guide: anthropic https://api.qcode.cc/api, chat https://api.qcode.cc/openai/v1 and responses https://api.qcode.cc/openai; Claude goes only through /api. The addresses are the same whether magpie runs on Windows or inside WSL. To skip magpie, QCode's environment variables page at https://docs.qcode.cc/en/docs/getting-started/environment shows ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL and ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN for Claude Code.