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Installation

Get Flock up and running in minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.10+ (we use modern async features)
  • OpenAI API key (or compatible LLM provider)
  • UV package manager (recommended) or pip

UV is a fast, reliable Python package manager that handles virtual environments automatically:

# Install Flock
uv pip install flock-core

# Or with all optional features
uv pip install "flock-core[all]"

Install with pip

# Install Flock
pip install flock-core

# Or with all optional features
pip install "flock-core[all]"

Optional Dependencies

Flock has several optional feature sets:

Development Tools

pip install "flock-core[dev]"
Includes pytest, ruff, mypy, and other development tools.

Dashboard (React UI)

pip install "flock-core[dashboard]"
Real-time dashboard for monitoring agent execution.

Comparison Frameworks

pip install "flock-core[comparison]"
LangGraph, AutoGen, and other frameworks for benchmarking.

All Features

pip install "flock-core[all]"

Configuration

Set Your API Key

# For OpenAI
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

# For other providers (via LiteLLM)
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="..."
export COHERE_API_KEY="..."

Configure Default Model

export DEFAULT_MODEL="openai/gpt-4.1"

Flock uses LiteLLM for provider abstraction, supporting 100+ LLM providers.

Verify Installation

from flock import Flock
print("✅ Flock installed successfully!")

Or from command line:

python -c "from flock import Flock; print('✅ Flock ready!')"

Flock's observability features require trace storage:

# Enable auto-tracing to DuckDB
export FLOCK_AUTO_TRACE=true
export FLOCK_TRACE_FILE=true

This creates .flock/traces.duckdb in your project directory for full execution history.

Next Steps

Ready to build your first agent? Continue to the Quick Start Guide.

For more details on tracing configuration, see the Tracing Guide.