Recommended programs and services

elanous runs on very little: Bun, git and one way to reach a language model. Everything else on this page is optional — but each one opens a part of elanous that is otherwise closed or runs in a weaker form. This page says what each program or service unlocks, what happens without it, and how to set it up on macOS, Linux and Windows (WSL2).

elanous doctor checks most of them on your machine and names what is still locked. See Doctor.

Where keys go

A service key is read from its environment variable, or from a file in ~/.cache/ named after the variable in lower case — for example ~/.cache/firecrawl_api_key for FIRECRAWL_API_KEY. The file needs only the key on one line. Keep it readable by you only (chmod 600).

At a glance

	What it unlocks	Without it
Bun, git	elanous itself	elanous does not start
A model subscription (ChatGPT via Codex, or another provider)	Chat, the harness, every agent	Nothing thinks — there is no free model floor
GitHub CLI (gh)	Pull requests, landing changes	The harness still works on a branch, but cannot open or merge PRs
ripgrep, Node.js	Fast code search; the Codex CLI	Weaker search; no Codex backend
Grok	A second model, web search, a coding agent backend	Fewer models and agents to switch to
Firecrawl, Tavily	Full-page crawl and better web search	A free search (DuckDuckGo + Jina) takes over
Chrome (or Chromium/Edge)	Agents that look at and use web pages	Browser tools say "Chrome unavailable"
Aside browser	A browser agent backend and page checks through Aside	The default Chrome path is used
Claude Code	A coding agent backend on your Claude subscription	Other backends
Tailscale	The web app on your phone, tablet and other computers	The web app works on this machine only
Obsidian	The Vault menu and saved notes	Any Markdown folder still works
Telegram / Discord bots	Talking to elanous and getting alerts on your phone	Terminal and web app only
Linear	Issues arriving as tasks	Tasks come from Telegram, the web app and the terminal
ElevenLabs	High-quality voice	Free voices (edge-tts, macOS say)
ffmpeg, ImageMagick	Video, audio and image steps	Those steps are skipped or fail

The base

Bun and git — required

The installer fetches Bun for you. git must already be there.

	Setup
macOS	xcode-select --install gives you git.
Linux	sudo apt-get install -y git unzip — Bun's own installer fails without unzip.
Windows	Use WSL2 and follow the Linux line. Native PowerShell is experimental — see Install.

A model — required

elanous needs at least one way to reach a language model. The simplest is a ChatGPT subscription through the Codex CLI:

npm install -g @openai/codex    # needs Node.js
elanous login openai-codex

Other providers (Grok, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter) and how to mix them are in Providers and Codex subscription.

GitHub CLI (gh) — strongly recommended

The harness uses gh to open, update and merge pull requests. It needs version 2.80 or later.

	Setup
macOS	brew install gh
Linux	elanous doctor --fix --yes installs a current one. Do not use the distribution's apt package — it is too old.
Windows (WSL2)	Same as Linux.

Then sign in once: gh auth login.

ripgrep and Node.js — recommended

• ripgrep (rg) makes code search fast for agents. macOS brew install ripgrep · Debian/Ubuntu sudo apt-get install -y ripgrep · Fedora sudo dnf install ripgrep.
• Node.js is needed only because the Codex CLI runs on it. macOS brew install node · Debian/Ubuntu sudo apt-get install -y nodejs npm.

Build tools and Python — optional

• A C/C++ compiler and make let elanous build its native terminal module. On Linux it falls back to Bun's built-in terminal support without them. macOS xcode-select --install · Debian/Ubuntu sudo apt-get install -y build-essential · Fedora sudo dnf install gcc-c++ make — then elanous doctor --fix --yes.
• Python is used by a few skills. elanous python setup --yes prepares an environment for them.

Seeing the world — search, crawl and the browser

These are the programs and services elanous uses to read the web. None is required: a free search tier (DuckDuckGo for search, Jina Reader for pages) always works without a key. The paid services give fuller pages and better results.

Firecrawl — full pages and whole sites

Crawls and scrapes pages (including pages that need JavaScript), maps whole sites, and searches developer documentation. Also used for web search.

• Key: FIRECRAWL_API_KEY (or ~/.cache/firecrawl_api_key).
• Without it: search and page reading fall back to the free tier.

Tavily — web search

A search engine built for agents.

• Key: TAVILY_API_KEY (or ~/.cache/tavily_api_key).
• The crawl skill uses it as soon as the key is there. The chat's built-in web search uses it only after elanous config set webSearch.tavily.enabled true.
• Without it: the free tier.

Jina — page reader

Works without a key. A key (JINA_API_KEY) only raises the rate limit.

Grok (xAI) — a model, a search engine and an agent

Grok does three jobs in elanous: another model for chat and the harness, a web-search provider that also covers X and Reddit, and a coding agent backend (elanous agent-mission mission --backend grok).

• Either a key — XAI_API_KEY (or ~/.cache/xai_api_key) — or the grok CLI signed in to your xAI account.
• Without it: other models and backends; X and Reddit coverage in search is thinner.

Apify — bulk posts from X

Collects many posts at once for analysis. Key: APIFY_TOKEN. There is no free replacement for this one job.

Chrome, Chromium or Edge — agents that use web pages

Agents use a real browser through the Chrome DevTools Protocol to open pages, read what is on screen and click through them. The web app's self-checks use it too.

	What elanous finds
macOS	/Applications/Google Chrome.app
Linux	google-chrome, chromium or the snap package
Windows (WSL2)	Chrome or Edge installed on Windows — no Linux browser needed

Point elanous at another build with ELANOUS_CHROME_BIN. Browsers such as Arc, Dia or Aside can be driven the same way while they are open, but not started by elanous.

Aside browser — a browser agent

With the Aside browser's command-line tool (aside) on your PATH, elanous can hand a whole task to Aside (elanous agent-mission mission --backend aside) and check pages through an Aside session. Without it, the Chrome path above is used.

Agents you can hand work to

elanous agent-mission runs another coding agent in a terminal that elanous watches and you can open from the web app (Terminal). Each backend uses your own subscription for that tool — elanous removes API keys from its environment so a subscription is not silently billed as API use.

Backend	Program to install and sign in
codex (default)	Codex CLI — npm install -g @openai/codex, then codex login
claude	Claude Code — install it and sign in with your Claude account
grok	The grok CLI from xAI — grok login
gemini	Google's Antigravity CLI (agy) — sign in once by hand
aside	The Aside browser CLI (aside)

Reaching elanous from anywhere

Tailscale — the web app across your devices

Tailscale connects your own computers and phones over a private network. With the web app shared from an always-on Elanous host, you can open the same workspace from a phone or tablet away from home, or from another computer on your tailnet. A headset or glasses can use it too if they have a browser that can open the web app. This is useful for checking work and reaching the host's web app remotely; it does not install Elanous on each device or make the host redundant.

Where this connects: This sharing setup provides a remote-access path to the web app. The pwa share enable step does not add content to the absorption loop, adaptive grounding, daily external trend watching or marketing; those are separate workflows.

Set it up in this order:

1. Install Tailscale on the Elanous host and each device from tailscale.com/download — the macOS app bundle or brew install tailscale both work. elanous looks for the CLI in that order: the macOS app bundle first (/Applications/Tailscale.app/Contents/MacOS/Tailscale), then /opt/homebrew/bin (Homebrew), then your PATH.

2. Sign in on each device and join the host's tailnet. Keep Tailscale running on the host and confirm it is connected.

3. If another person will use their own account, invite them to the tailnet from the Tailscale admin console → Users → Invite external users: by email, or by generating and sharing an invite link. The invited person opens the link, signs in with their own account, and the devices they connect join your tailnet. Inviting needs an Owner, Admin or IT admin role; see Tailscale's invite guide for the current procedure.

4. On the host, enable sharing for the web app:

   elanous nexus pwa share enable

5. Open the shared URL from a browser on a signed-in phone, tablet or other device. See The web app.

Check the host's Tailscale connection and its MagicDNS name with this read-only command:

tailscale status --json

The host should report BackendState as Running; Self.DNSName identifies its MagicDNS name. Check the active Serve configuration independently with:

tailscale serve status --json

elanous nexus pwa share enable forwards the Nexus web app through Tailscale Serve's TLS-terminated TCP mode on the daemon's port, mounted under /app/showroom/. A successful command prints the share URL with your tailnet's MagicDNS name for the host; use that exact URL on another device in the same tailnet. The port is part of the URL. In the Serve status JSON, find TCP["<port>"] using the port printed in that URL; its TCPForward should target localhost:<port> and TerminateTLS should name the host. If sharing fails, confirm that Tailscale is running and that the Nexus daemon has a known port, then retry the command. These status checks do not by themselves prove another device can open the app.

One macOS quirk to know when scripting these checks: the app-bundle binary behaves as a GUI app when its environment is empty — for example when a daemon (with no TERM) runs the check — prints "The Tailscale GUI failed to start", and exits 0 with no JSON, so a status check reads as failure while Tailscale itself is fine. Set TAILSCALE_BE_CLI=1 in the environment you give the CLI to pin command-line behavior; elanous does this for its own checks (measured 2026-09-27).

Tailscale is optional: without it, the web app remains available on the host but is not shared through this tailnet path. The documented benefit here is remote access to the web app; no increase in automation or host availability has been measured for this guide.

Telegram and Discord

Talk to elanous and receive alerts from your phone.

elanous onboarding telegram    # asks for the bot token from @BotFather
elanous onboarding discord

You can also connect both from the web app's Settings. See Telegram and Discord.

Linear

Issues in Linear arrive as elanous tasks. See Tasks and intake.

Notes, voice and media

Obsidian

The web app's Vault menu reads and edits an Obsidian vault, and saved summaries land there. Any folder of Markdown files works; Obsidian itself only makes browsing nicer. Choose the folder with elanous onboarding obsidian or in the web app's Settings. See Vault.

Voice

	What it gives	Setup
ElevenLabs	Natural speech and streaming speech-to-text	ELEVENLABS_API_KEY
edge-tts	Free speech	pip install edge-tts, and sox
macOS say	Free speech, macOS only	built in

Without ElevenLabs, elanous uses edge-tts and then say — whichever is actually installed (edge-tts counts only when both edge-tts and sox are found). On Linux there is no say, so install edge-tts and sox if you want speech without a paid key.

Video, audio, images and text in pictures

Program	Used for	Setup
ffmpeg	Video and audio steps	macOS brew install ffmpeg · Linux sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg
ImageMagick (magick)	Image steps	macOS brew install imagemagick · Linux sudo apt-get install -y imagemagick
sox	Audio conversion (and edge-tts)	macOS brew install sox · Linux sudo apt-get install -y sox
Upstage	Reading text from images and documents	UPSTAGE_API_KEY; without it, a vision model reads them
Supadata	YouTube transcripts	SUPADATA_API_KEY

Check what you have

elanous doctor

prints every key it found (never the value), every program it looked for, what you can and cannot do yet, and how to fix each gap. elanous doctor --fix --yes installs what it safely can.