---
title: 'Self-Hosting Honcho'
sidebarTitle: 'Self-Hosting'
description: 'Running a local version of the Honcho API Server'
icon: 'cloud'
---

> This guide was made using a M1 Macbook Pro. For any compatibility issues
> on different platforms please raise an Issue.

### Prerequisites and Dependencies

Honcho is developed using [python](https://www.python.org/) and [poetry](https://python-poetry.org/).

The minimum python version is `3.9`
The minimum poetry version is `1.4.1`

### Setup

Once the dependencies are installed on the system run the following steps to get
the local project setup. 

1. Clone the repository

```bash
git clone https://github.com/plastic-labs/honcho.git
```

2. Enter the repository and install the python dependencies

We recommend using a virtual environment to isolate the dependencies for Honcho
from other projects on the same system. With `poetry` a virtual environment can
be generated using the `poetry shell` command. Once the virtual environment is
created and activated install the dependencies with `poetry install`

Putting this together:

```bash
cd honcho
poetry shell
poetry install
```

3. Set up a database

Honcho utilized [Postgres](https://www.postgresql.org/) for its database with 
pgvector. An easy way to get started with a postgresdb is to create a project
with [Supabase](https://supabase.com/)

A `docker-compose` template is also available with a database configuration
available. 

4. Edit the environment variables. 

Honcho uses a `.env` file for managing runtime environment variables. A
`.env.template` file is included for convenience. Several of the configurations
are not required and are only necessary for additional logging, monitoring, and
security.

Below are the required configurations

```env
CONNECTION_URI= # Connection uri for a postgres database
OPENAI_API_KEY= # API Key for OpenAI used for insights
```
> Note that the `CONNECTION_URI` must have the prefix `postgresql+psycopg` to
> function properly. This is a requirement brought by `sqlalchemy`

The template has the additional functionality disabled by default. To ensure
that they are disabled you can verify the following environment variables are
set to false. 

```env
USE_AUTH_SERVICE=false
OPENTELEMETRY_ENABLED=false
SENTRY_ENABLED=false
```

5. Launch the API

With the dependencies installed, a database setup and enabled with `pgvector`,
and the environment variables setup you can now launch a local instance of
Honcho. The following command will launch the storage API for Honcho

```bash
python -m uvicorn src.main:app --reload --port 8000
```
This is a development server that will reload whenever code is changed. When
first launching the API with a connection the database it will provision the
necessary tables for Honcho to operate.

### Docker

As mentioned earlier a `docker-compose` template is included for running Honcho.
As an alternative to running Honcho locally it can also be run with the compose
template. 

Copy the template and update the appropriate environment variables before
launching the service.

```bash
cd honcho
cp docker-compose.yml.example docker-compose.yml
[ update the file with openai key and other wanted environment variables ]
docker compose up
```
