5-minute quickstart
KiCI offers two equally-supported quickstart paths. Pick the one that fits your machine — both end with the same working pipeline (orchestrator + agent + your first workflow run visible in the dashboard).
Option A — Docker / Podman (recommended)
Section titled “Option A — Docker / Podman (recommended)”Two containers brought up with docker compose up -d (orchestrator + PostgreSQL), plus one short-lived agent container spawned per job by the container scaler. Minimal host setup, perfect for a laptop, home server, or a tiny VM. No need to install PostgreSQL or any other system service.
Start with the Docker / Podman quickstart →
Option B — Bare-metal install
Section titled “Option B — Bare-metal install”Native systemd services managed by kici-admin orchestrator install / kici-admin agent install — the orchestrator and agents run as native processes. The backing PostgreSQL runs as a single container by default (one docker compose up -d), or you can install it natively if you’d rather not run a container runtime at all. Best for a long-lived Linux host.
Start with the bare-metal quickstart →
Which should I pick?
Section titled “Which should I pick?”| Docker / Podman | Bare metal | |
|---|---|---|
| Host requirements | docker or podman with compose v2.20+ | systemd, Node.js 24+, PostgreSQL 18 (container — needs docker/podman — or native) |
| Time to first run | ~5 minutes | ~10 minutes |
| Upgrades | docker compose pull + restart | kici-admin orchestrator restart after npm install -g kici-admin@latest |
| Best for | Quick evaluation, ephemeral hosts | Long-lived production hosts |
If you’re not sure, pick Docker / Podman.
Looking for the laptop-only path?
Section titled “Looking for the laptop-only path?”Both quickstarts deploy a real orchestrator + agent. If you only want to write a workflow and dry-run it on your laptop with no infrastructure, Getting started covers kici test and kici run local instead.