This guide was made using a M1 Macbook Pro. For any compatibility issues on different platforms please raise an Issue.

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Prerequisites and Dependencies

Honcho is developed using python and uv. The minimum python version is 3.9 The minimum poetry version is 0.4.9

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Setup

Once the dependencies are installed on the system run the following steps to get the local project setup.
  1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/plastic-labs/honcho.git
  1. Enter the repository and install the python dependencies
We recommend using a virtual environment to isolate the dependencies for Honcho from other projects on the same system. uv will create a virtual environment when you sync your dependencies in the project. Putting this together: 
cd honcho
uv sync
This will create a virtual environment and install the dependencies for Honcho. The default virtual environment will be located at honcho/.venv. Activate the virtual environment via: 
source honcho/.venv/bin/activate
  1. Set up a database
Honcho utilized Postgres for its database with pgvector. An easy way to get started with a postgresdb is to create a project with Supabase A docker-compose template is also available with a database configuration available.
  1. Edit the environment variables.
Honcho uses a .env file for managing runtime environment variables. A .env.template file is included for convenience. Several of the configurations are not required and are only necessary for additional logging, monitoring, and security. Below are the required configurations 
CONNECTION_URI= # Connection uri for a postgres database
OPENAI_API_KEY= # API Key for OpenAI used for embedding documents
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY= # API Key for Anthropic used for the deriver and dialectic API
Note that the CONNECTION_URI must have the prefix postgresql+psycopg to function properly. This is a requirement brought by sqlalchemy
The template has the additional functionality disabled by default. To ensure that they are disabled you can verify the following environment variables are set to false. 
USE_AUTH=false
SENTRY_ENABLED=false
  1. Launch the API
With the dependencies installed, a database setup and enabled with pgvector, and the environment variables setup you can now launch a local instance of Honcho. The following command will launch the storage API for Honcho 
fastapi dev src/main.py
This is a development server that will reload whenever code is changed. When first launching the API with a connection the database it will provision the necessary tables for Honcho to operate.

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Docker

As mentioned earlier a docker-compose template is included for running Honcho. As an alternative to running Honcho locally it can also be run with the compose template. Copy the template and update the appropriate environment variables before launching the service. 
cd honcho
cp docker-compose.yml.example docker-compose.yml
[ update the file with openai key and other wanted environment variables ]
docker compose up