Skip to content
TribalMind

Installation

Requirements

Section titled “Requirements”
  • Python 3.11+
  • A Backboard API key (free tier available)

Install

Section titled “Install”
Terminal window
pip install tribalmind

Verify the installation:

Terminal window
tribal --version

Optionally, enable tab-completion for your shell:

Terminal window
tribal --install-completion

Initialize a project

Section titled “Initialize a project”

  1. Run tribal init in your project root:

    Terminal window
    tribal init

    The interactive setup will walk you through:

    • Entering your Backboard API key (stored securely in your OS keyring)
    • Choosing an LLM provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google)
    • Creating a Backboard assistant for this project

  2. Set up agent integration (optional but recommended):

    Terminal window
    tribal setup-agents

    This generates instruction files (e.g., CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules) so your AI agents automatically use TribalMind.

Global vs per-project setup

Section titled “Global vs per-project setup”

By default, tribal init creates a per-project config at .tribal/config.yaml.

For a user-level default that all repos inherit:

Terminal window
tribal init --global

This writes to ~/.config/tribalmind/tribal.yaml. Any repo without its own .tribal/config.yaml will use the global config.

Non-interactive setup

Section titled “Non-interactive setup”

For CI/CD or scripted environments:

Terminal window
tribal init --api-key sk-xxx --llm-provider anthropic --model-name claude-sonnet-4-20250514

Upgrading

Section titled “Upgrading”
Terminal window
tribal upgrade

This upgrades the package and auto-refreshes your agent config files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, etc.) to the latest template. Use --no-update-docs to skip the config update.

Or manually:

Terminal window
pip install -U tribalmind

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”