Installation

What to install

Three shapes. Pick one based on how you'll use TAI.

As a CLI

The most common shape. Installs the tai command globally.

bash

npm install -g @tailored-ai/cli

You can then run tai from any folder that has a config.yaml. Works with any package manager:

bash

pnpm add -g @tailored-ai/cli
yarn global add @tailored-ai/cli
bun add -g @tailored-ai/cli

As a project dependency

If you want the agent's version pinned to your project's lockfile:

bash

npm install --save-dev @tailored-ai/cli

Run via your package manager's script runner: npx tai, pnpm tai, yarn tai, bunx tai. Your project's config.yaml sits next to your package.json.

As a library you embed

When you want the runtime inside your own Node service rather than running the tai command, depend on the libraries directly:

bash

npm install @tailored-ai/core @tailored-ai/server better-sqlite3

See @tailored-ai/core for the embed API and @tailored-ai/server for the HTTP surface.

System requirements

Node.js 20 or newer. Node 18 reached EOL in April 2025. TAI declares engines.node: ">=20".
A C toolchain only if better-sqlite3 doesn't have a prebuilt binary for your platform. Prebuilt binaries cover Linux, macOS, and Windows on x64 and arm64. If install fails: install python3 and a compiler (Xcode CLT on macOS, build-essential on Debian/Ubuntu, Visual Studio Build Tools on Windows).

Pick a provider

TAI doesn't ship a model. Pick the shape that matches where your model runs.

Local or self-hosted (Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio)

The built-in openai_compatible provider talks to any server that speaks the OpenAI chat API. For Ollama on a developer laptop:

bash

brew install ollama        # or .deb / .rpm / install script
ollama serve &
ollama pull llama3.2

yaml

providers:
  openai_compatible:
    baseUrl: http://localhost:11434/v1
    defaultModel: llama3.2

agent:
  defaultProvider: openai_compatible

For vLLM swap the baseUrl for http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1. An apiKey is optional and only sent when set.

Hosted vendors (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Bedrock)

Hosted providers ship as plugins. Install the one you want, configure its providers block, and select it:

bash

tai plugin install @tailored-ai/provider-anthropic

yaml

providers:
  anthropic:
    apiKey: ${ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}
    defaultModel: claude-haiku-4-5

agent:
  defaultProvider: anthropic

.env alongside config.yaml:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-…

The same shape works for @tailored-ai/provider-openai, @tailored-ai/provider-openrouter, and @tailored-ai/provider-bedrock. Each plugin's page under Packages lists its options.

Multi-provider

You can also declare several providers and let each agent pick its own. See Configuration → Multi-provider.

Optional dependencies

A few tools have peer dependencies installed only if you turn them on. Each tool fails with a clear "run npm install …" message at first use if the peer is missing.

Tool you turn on	Peer to install
`browser`	`npm install playwright && npx playwright install chromium`
`browser_mediator`	`npm install @tailored-ai/browser-mediator playwright && npx playwright install chromium`
`md_to_pdf`	`npm install md-to-pdf`
PDF parsing (used by document tools)	`npm install pdf-parse`
OCR on scanned PDFs and images	`npm install tesseract.js`
Trusted-actions Amazon purchases	`npm install @tailored-ai/trusted-actions`; runs in its own Docker container

Where things live on disk

By default TAI uses the directory you run tai from. Nothing global is created beyond the CLI itself.

your-folder/
├── config.yaml          # required
├── .env                 # optional, for ${VAR} interpolation
├── agent.db             # SQLite; created on first run
├── data/                # embeddings, knowledge base; created on first run
└── workflows/           # optional; YAML workflow files

To centralize state somewhere else, set TAI_HOME=/path/to/dir. TAI will look for config.yaml there and put agent.db and data/ there too.

Verifying the install

bash

tai --help            # CLI help
tai --list-agents     # agents your config defines
tai -m "Say hi"       # one-shot message; tests the provider connection

If --list-agents works but tai -m "…" hangs or errors, the LLM provider isn't reachable. Check that Ollama or vLLM is running, or that your API key is set.

Uninstall

bash

npm uninstall -g @tailored-ai/cli

The folder you ran in still has its agent.db and data/. Delete them if you don't want them.