Installation

See Prerequisites before starting. New to abTARS? Start with Quick Start for what you need and what to decide.

Quick install

One-liner (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aksika/abtars/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

No download step — the script runs straight from the pipe and installs the latest dev commit by default. Variants: | sh -s -- --stable, | sh -s -- --alpha, or | sh -s -- --dev [DIR] (build a local checkout as-is).

Omit --non-interactive and the wizard prompts for each value. When piped, interactive setup reattaches to your terminal; without one, pass unattended flags:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aksika/abtars/main/scripts/install.sh | \
  ABTARS_INSTALL_ARGS='--non-interactive --accept-risk --user-name "yourname" ...' sh

abmind stays separate — install it with its own one-liner when memory is needed. The one-liner also installs the Pi runtime (abtars deps install pi) — the bridge cannot wire its pipeline without it.

Manual alternative

npm install -g abtars@alpha
abtars deps install all
abtars install

abtars install creates config, clones source, builds, deploys the release, and starts the bridge. The install ships a pi-stack default model (GPT-6 Luna realtime via OpenRouter) on all agents — no provider questions. Add your OPENROUTER_API_KEY to ~/.abtars/secret/ afterwards (doctor flags it until then). Install pi with abtars deps install pi and switch models anytime via /model.

Install modes

Mode	How it works	Who
daemon (default)	launchd/systemd manages watchdog → auto-restart on crash	Production
simple	No daemon, user runs abtars start/stop manually	Testing, development

Daemon mode starts automatically after abtars install. Simple mode requires abtars start.

Simple mode note: if you use optional deps (abtars deps install), add to your shell profile:

export NODE_PATH="$HOME/.local/lib/node_modules:$NODE_PATH"

Daemon mode sets this automatically. See Dependencies for the full abtars deps reference.

Verify

abtars doctor    # all green = healthy
abtars status    # shows PID, uptime, model

Send a message to your bot on Telegram — it should respond.

Adding API keys later

Secrets live in ~/.abtars/secret/, one file per key (encrypted at rest after first boot). The filename becomes the environment variable name:

echo -n "sk-or-v1-abc123..." > ~/.abtars/secret/OPENROUTER_API_KEY
abtars stop && abtars start

See Secrets Vault for the full details.

Next steps

• Health Check — verify everything is running correctly
• Upgrading — keep your bridge up to date
• Backup & Restore — protect your data
• Deploy Pipeline — update/rollback reference and release layout