Do I Need sudo? No.

abtars and abmind install, update, and run entirely in user space. No root access required.

Everything lives under ~/

Component	Location
Node + npm packages	~/.nvm/versions/node/... (nvm) or ~/.npm-global/
abtars releases	~/.abtars-releases/
abtars runtime	~/.abtars/
abmind data	~/.abmind/
Watchdog service	~/Library/LaunchAgents/ (macOS) or ~/.config/systemd/user/ (Linux)
Native deps	~/.local/lib/node_modules/

No system paths. No /usr/local/. No /etc/. No root.

One exception: systemd linger (Linux only)

For the bridge to survive reboot as a user systemd service, you may need to enable linger once:

sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER

One-time system admin action. After that: never sudo again.

Optional system binaries may need a system installer

The optional system binaries (ollama, bwrap, lightpanda) are the reason abtars deps splits its dependencies in two. Npm packages auto-install under ~/ with no sudo. System binaries are installed by their own upstream installers, some of which touch system paths (apt install bubblewrap needs root). That is exactly why abtars does not auto-install them: abtars deps install ollama prints the upstream command for you to run (and decide about sudo) rather than running it silently. Nothing abtars itself installs requires root.

If npm defaults to /usr/local/ (macOS)

macOS ships with npm pointing at /usr/local/, which requires sudo for npm install -g. Fix with one of:

Option A — redirect npm globals to your home dir:

npm config set prefix ~/.npm-global
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.npm-global/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

Option B — use nvm (recommended): nvm installs Node + npm under ~/.nvm/ — no sudo, multiple Node versions, no config needed. See Prerequisites for install instructions.