Skip to content

ProbOS Quickstart -- Install to First Conversation

Status: Beta. An automated test (tests/test_ad1137_quickstart_chain.py) runs probos setup, probos doctor and a first conversation end to end, through the real CLI and against a local stand-in for a model provider. It starts from an installed checkout: the install step is not part of the test, because installing downloads the dependencies. The rest of ProbOS is Alpha.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.12 or newer, and git
  • One LLM endpoint: OpenAI, OpenRouter, a local Ollama, the GitHub Copilot proxy, or any OpenAI-compatible server
  • Room for the dependencies: the core install includes PyTorch, ChromaDB and sentence-transformers

Install

ProbOS is not on PyPI yet (the release is tracked in issue #1053), so install it from source into a virtual environment:

git clone https://github.com/seangalliher/ProbOS.git
cd ProbOS
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate    # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e .

Configure your model

probos setup

ProbOS detects a local Ollama or Copilot proxy, then asks for a provider and model, and for an API key when the provider needs one. It checks them against the provider before writing ~/.probos/config.yaml, and never prints the key itself: provider error excerpts have its literal, percent-encoded and base64 forms redacted, though a provider can still echo it in another form. probos init still creates a base config without a provider check.

Diagnostic check

probos doctor

This checks the Python version, the config file probos would load (and that it loads), the data directory, that each LLM tier's provider answers with your key and model, and which optional extras are installed, then NATS (if enabled), ChromaDB and the other subsystems. Each failed check (✗) names its fix, and doctor exits non-zero while any check fails; a ⚠ is not a failure. To check a different config file, run probos doctor --config PATH.

First conversation

probos

You will land in the interactive shell. Try:

> What can you do?

The Ship's Computer will respond. Try a slash command:

> /agents

This lists the registered crew. Each agent represents a domain capability. /quit leaves the shell. If the shell reports that no LLM endpoint is reachable and falls back to the mock client, run probos doctor again.

Next