Skip to content

Installation

Prerequisites

Pipelex requires python version 3.10 or above, and access to an LLM, via an API key or a custom endpoint.

Getting Started

Along with our Quick Start Guide, we recommend you check out our Cookbook for practical examples.

  • Create a virtual environment (recommended)
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
  • Install Pipelex

Pipelex can be installed from PyPI. We encourage the use of uv for faster installs and dependency management:

uv pip install pipelex

Otherwise use pip: 

pip install pipelex

  • Make sure you have a .env file at the root of your project that contains the following fields
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk_...

All the secret keys used by pipelex are specified in the .env.example file. However, by default, only the OPENAI_API_KEY is required.

  • Make sure you run the init commands:

In order to set the pipelex configuration files, you need to run 2 commands using the CLI (we recommend to run it at the root of your project):

  • pipelex init-libraries: This will create a pipelex_libraries folder, with the base llm configuration and the base pipelines. This is the directory where you should add your pipelines.

The structure is like this:

├── pipelex_libraries           
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── pipelines/                          # The pipelines and the structured output are stored here
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   └── base_library/                   # The base library with basic pipelines
│   ├── templates/                          # Those are template prompt libraries
│   ├── llm_deck/                           # A llm deck is a simple way to name a llm and its configuration.
│   └── llm_integrations/                   # This directory regroups the configuration of the different models

Learn more about pipelex_libraries in our Libraries documentation

  • pipelex init-config: This cli command will create a pipelex.toml file at the root of the project, with basic configuration. This configuration file gathers all configuration for feature flags, logging, cost reporting, and so on... Learn more in our Configuration documentation

💡 Any troubles? Have a look at our Cookbook! and come ask for help on our Discord