Get started / Getting started

Getting started

Run AgentParley on your own machine and have a crew working in a few minutes.

Prerequisites

.NET 10 SDK — the runtime and CLI are built on it.
Node 20+ — only if you plan to rebuild the web console from source.
An API key for at least one model provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint).

Clone & build

bash

git clone https://github.com/AgentParley/AgentParley.git
cd AgentParley
dotnet build

Initialize a home

AgentParley keeps everything (config, database, vault, plugins, workspaces) under a single home directory — ~/parley by default. Create it and mint your access tokens:

bash

dotnet run --project src/AgentParley.Cli -- init
# Initialized /Users/you/parley
# admin token: ap_live_...   (full access)
# read token:  ap_read_...   (read-only observers)

Point at a different home with --home /path on any command, or the PARLEY_HOME environment variable. This is how you run multiple isolated instances side by side.

Start the host

bash

dotnet run --project src/AgentParley.Cli -- serve
# parley serving — Ctrl+C to stop

Open the console at http://127.0.0.1:8420. On a fresh install you'll land in the onboarding wizard — no token wall on first run from localhost. It walks you through connecting a provider, adding a model, configuring embeddings, and creating your first agent, then reveals your admin token at the end.

The console is the full surface — almost everything in these docs can be done there as well as from the CLI. See The console for a tour and a console-vs-CLI map.

Create your first agent

You can do this in the wizard, or from the CLI:

bash

dotnet run --project src/AgentParley.Cli -- agent create alfred --model claude-opus --desc "My first agent"
dotnet run --project src/AgentParley.Cli -- agent list

Open the agent in the console, give it a soul (its persona) and instructions, start a session, and say hello. From here, head to the tutorial to grow it into a crew.

Health check. If something looks off, run dotnet run --project src/AgentParley.Cli -- doctor — it reports config, vault, database, and model-connectivity problems with a fix for each.

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Overview

The console