Quickstart

This path gets Navigator running locally with pnpm, PostgreSQL, and one AI provider key.

You only need one provider key to start. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, xAI, OpenRouter, or an Ollama-compatible endpoint can be added later.

Install dependencies

pnpm i

The install step runs the project setup script and prepares a .env file from the example configuration.

Start PostgreSQL

pnpm docker:pg

If you already have PostgreSQL, keep it running and set POSTGRES_URL in .env instead.

Add credentials

Open .env and fill in:

BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=your-generated-secret
POSTGRES_URL=postgres://your_username:your_password@localhost:5432/your_database_name
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

Swap OPENAI_API_KEY for another provider if your deployment uses Anthropic, Google, xAI, OpenRouter, or Ollama.

Apply database migrations

pnpm db:migrate

Run the app

pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:3000 and start your first thread.

First things to try

Type @ in chat and pick an available tool, workflow, preset, or agent.

Use automatic, manual, or disabled tool execution depending on the task.

Add EXA_API_KEY to let Navigator research and extract web content.

If you prefer the bundled Docker Compose path:

pnpm i
pnpm docker-compose:up

Then fill the generated .env with provider keys and open http://localhost:3000.