Skip to content

Install StartKit.AI

Welcome to StartKit.AI, follow these steps to get the demo apps up and running in a few minutes.

Clone the repo

First start by cloning the GitHub Repo. If you don’t have access yet, you need to purchase it!

git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:startkit-ai/startkit.ai.git new-ai-project
cd new-ai-project

We recommend you create a new GitHub repo, and add that as the origin.

git remote remove origin
git remote add origin <your_repo>

If you want to pull any of our updates later then you can add the StartKit.AI repo as a separate remote:

git remote add startkit git@github.com:startkit-ai/startkit.ai.git
# pull updates from the startkit.ai main branch
git pull startkit main
# push local changes to your repo
git push -u origin main

Install dependencies

You can use either npm or yarn to install the project dependencies. If you don’t have Node.js installed yet then you can follow their installation guide here.

# install with yarn
yarn
# or install with npm
npm i

Setup the environment

All keys and other secret variables are stored in a .env file.

Copy the .env.example file:

Terminal window
cp .env.example .env

You’ll need to create a random string to be used as a JWT secret - StartKit uses JWTs to secure some requests and this random token is used to encrypt them.

This script will create a random 32 character string and adds it to the .env file:

Terminal window
sed -i.bak "s/^JWT_SECRET=.*/JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 24 | tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 | head -c 32)/" .env

More info here.


Now we can get the rest of the external services setup. Starting with a MongoDB database in the next section!