Installation

Crew ships as a Python package that bundles the React dashboard. There are four ways to install it; pick whichever fits how you'll run it. All builds are driven by plain pip + npm/Vite + pytest. No proprietary tooling.

Crew drives an LLM through kiro-cli over the Agent Client Protocol. It is the only provider (agent.provider = acp). The dashboard guides Kiro CLI setup and sign-in before chat opens. kirocrew doctor reports whether the binary is found and logged in.

If the Gateway detects a Kiro CLI without the required acp command, setup stops at Kiro CLI update needed. Select Update Kiro CLI to run kiro-cli update on the Gateway host, then retry the check.

Semantic memory needs no setup. Embeddings run in-process and the Gateway downloads its embedding model (~610 MB) in the background on first start, verifies it, and stores it under ~/.kiro/crew/models. Until the model lands, memory search falls back to keyword matching and picks up embeddings automatically without a restart. Set KIROCREW_EMBED_MODEL_URL to point at a mirror for airgapped installs.

Crew supports Windows natively. Use CPython 3.12 + a venv + pip install -e . tzdata, and launch with python -m kiro_crew gateway.

py -3.12 -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e . tzdata
python -m kiro_crew gateway

All POSIX-only process, signal, file-lock, and metrics calls are routed through kiro_crew.platform_compat. The OS-level filesystem sandbox (Linux namespaces / macOS Seatbelt) is not available on Windows; every other feature works, and Computer Use drives native Windows applications through UI Automation. The interactive web-terminal and the SSO-login PTY degrade to a clear "not supported on Windows" response rather than crashing.

The signed Windows installer updates in place: Restart & Update shows installer progress, updates the existing install in place, updates retained Start Menu and Desktop shortcuts, and relaunches the new build. Earlier versions nested a copy and reopened the old one; that behavior is gone.

For wheel and cli.sh installs, kirocrew update installs the new version into a fresh, signature-verified tree and switches to it atomically. You do not need to re-run the installer manually.

kirocrew update

The Settings → About page reports when the last update check ran and when the next is due, shows the version actually running, and displays the "What's new" notes for the version you just installed (not an older release).

When Crew changes a default value between releases, your stored config may still hold the older default. Run kirocrew config defaults to list stored values that still hold superseded defaults. Use --adopt to take the current defaults or --keep to record the stored values as intentional.

This applies after upgrading, particularly if the voice stt_model or sandbox settings were set by an earlier version.

For the one-line wheel, source build, and Docker installs, set up and verify after installing:

kirocrew setup            # interactive wizard: data dir, agent, credentials
kirocrew doctor           # verify everything is wired up
kirocrew gateway          # start the server → http://localhost:5476

kirocrew doctor reports the status of the kiro-cli binary, its authentication, Ollama/embeddings, Slack tokens, config validity, and MCP servers.

All persistent state lives under ~/.kiro/crew/ (override with KIROCREW_HOME):

~/.kiro/crew/
├── config.json          # user configuration
├── .env                 # Slack tokens, owner ID, other credentials
├── workspace/
│   ├── memory/          # preferences.md, projects.md, history/
│   ├── lessons.jsonl    # learned corrections
│   └── knowledge/       # ingested documents (FTS5 + vectors)
├── conversations/       # JSONL session logs
├── crons.json           # scheduled jobs
├── audit.log            # bash command audit trail
└── agents/              # generated kiro-cli agent configs

Both KIROCREW_HOME and KIROCREW_PORT are validated at CLI entry, not stored as config keys. Pass --port on the CLI to override the env var per-invocation.

Install with pip install "kirocrew[<extra>]":

Piper TTS is the default text-to-speech provider and runs locally — no extra install needed.