Installation

Three ways to get OpenCrabs running.

Option 1: Download Binary (recommended)

Grab a pre-built binary from GitHub Releases — available for Linux (amd64/arm64), macOS (amd64/arm64), and Windows.

# Download and extract
curl -fsSL https://github.com/adolfousier/opencrabs/releases/latest/download/opencrabs-$(uname -m)-$(uname -s | tr A-Z a-z).tar.gz | tar xz

# Run
./opencrabs

The onboarding wizard handles everything on first run.

/rebuild works even with pre-built binaries — it auto-clones the source to ~/.opencrabs/source/ on first use, then builds and hot-restarts.

Option 2: Build from Source

Required for /rebuild, adding custom tools, or modifying the agent.

Prerequisites:

• Rust nightly (2024 edition) — Install Rust, then rustup toolchain install nightly
• An API key from at least one supported provider
• SQLite (bundled via sqlx)
• Linux: build-essential, pkg-config, libssl-dev, libchafa-dev

git clone https://github.com/adolfousier/opencrabs.git
cd opencrabs

# Build & run (development)
cargo run --bin opencrabs

# Or build release and run directly
cargo build --release
./target/release/opencrabs

OpenCrabs uses keys.toml instead of .env for API keys. The onboarding wizard will help you set it up, or edit ~/.opencrabs/keys.toml directly.

Option 3: Docker

Run OpenCrabs in an isolated container. Build takes ~15min (Rust release + LTO).

git clone https://github.com/adolfousier/opencrabs.git
cd opencrabs
docker compose -f src/docker/compose.yml up --build

Config, workspace, and memory DB persist in a Docker volume across restarts. API keys in keys.toml are mounted into the container at runtime — never baked into the image.

Updating

• Binary users: Type /evolve in the TUI to download the latest release
• Source users: git pull && cargo build --release, or type /rebuild in the TUI
• Docker users: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d