Setup

Get Started

TKA runs on your machine. Setup takes about 30 minutes. You need an AI subscription (Claude or ChatGPT) and a computer — that's it.

Quick Start

Open your terminal (or Claude Code / Codex) and run:

$ claude --dangerously-skip-permissions "Run the TKA setup guide"

Yes, the flag sounds scary. It means "let the AI run commands without asking permission for each one." The setup installs packages, edits config files, and runs migrations — it needs to execute freely. You're on your local machine, not production. This is safe.

What Gets Installed

PHP 8.3+ — Runtime for the orchestration engine

Composer — PHP dependency management

Node.js 20+ — Frontend build tooling

MySQL 8+ — State storage — flows, tasks, system events

Nginx or Apache — Web server for the management UI

TKA — The orchestration platform itself

Platform Notes

Windows

TKA runs in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or a VirtualBox VM. WSL is faster to set up and gets full access to your PC's hardware. VirtualBox works if you prefer full isolation. The setup guide will detect your environment and walk you through either path.

macOS

Native install via Homebrew or run in a VM/Docker container. The setup guide handles both.

Linux

You're home. The setup guide installs everything directly.

Environment Tip

Keep your AI API keys out of your shell environment. If you have an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your .bashrc, sub-agents spawned by TKA will pick it up and bill to your API account instead of your subscription. Use OAuth tokens for headless agent auth instead.