Getting Started

Get up and running with AgentVisor™ in minutes.

Prerequisites

Docker

AgentVisor uses Docker to build, test, and deploy your agents.

# Verify Docker is installed and running
docker version

Install Docker Desktop:

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux

Python 3.10+ (for LangGraph agents)

Python is required for the built-in LangGraph framework provider and the tutorial. AgentVisor's framework provider architecture supports additional agent frameworks and languages.

# Check your Python version
python3 --version

Install Python:

# macOS
brew install python@3.12

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install python3.12 python3.12-venv

# Or download from https://www.python.org/downloads/

jq

The tutorial and several example commands pipe API responses through jq to extract and pretty-print JSON fields.

# Verify jq is installed
jq --version

Install jq:

• macOS: brew install jq
• Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install jq
• Other platforms: see the jq download page

Temporal and Ollama

Projects created with agentvisor template create ship a compose.yml that brings up Temporal (durable workflow orchestration for agent runs) and Ollama (a local LLM server for the tutorial's default agent). You don't install these yourself — docker compose up -d starts them as containers alongside Docker.

Install the CLI

Install Script

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/manetu/agentvisor/main/install.sh | sh

The script detects your OS and architecture, downloads the correct binary, verifies its SHA256 checksum, and installs to /usr/local/bin (using sudo only if needed).

Environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
AGENTVISOR_VERSION	latest	Specific version to install (e.g. 1.2.3, the v prefix is optional)
AGENTVISOR_INSTALL_DIR	/usr/local/bin	Installation directory
AGENTVISOR_NO_VERIFY	0	Set to 1 to skip checksum verification

Example with custom options:

AGENTVISOR_VERSION=1.2.3 AGENTVISOR_INSTALL_DIR=~/.local/bin \
  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/manetu/agentvisor/main/install.sh | sh

Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

If you use Homebrew, tap the official AgentVisor formula and install:

brew tap manetu/homebrew-tap
brew install manetu/tap/agentvisor

Upgrade later with:

brew update
brew upgrade manetu/tap/agentvisor

Manual Download

Download the tarball for your platform directly from GitHub Releases:

# Example for macOS ARM64 — replace VERSION with a tag from the Releases page
VERSION=v1.2.3
curl -sLO "https://github.com/manetu/agentvisor/releases/download/${VERSION}/agentvisor-darwin-arm64-${VERSION}.tar.gz"
tar xzf "agentvisor-darwin-arm64-${VERSION}.tar.gz"
sudo mv agentvisor /usr/local/bin/

Other platforms follow the same agentvisor-<os>-<arch>-<version>.tar.gz pattern (linux-amd64, linux-arm64, darwin-amd64). Each release also publishes a checksums.txt you can verify against, and a .whl for the Python SDK.

Verify Installation

agentvisor --help

Expected output:

Manetu AgentVisor™ is a Controlled Autonomous Runtime Environment providing
containment and observability for AI agents. It automatically detects your application
runtime and builds a combined image with the host runtime, guest proxy, and your agent code.

Usage:
  agentvisor [command]

Available Commands:
  build       Build a combined AgentVisor™ image from your agent source
  run         Run a single agent execution and exit
  serve       Start AgentVisor™ and wait for API requests
  exec        Start an interactive terminal session inside an AgentVisor sandbox
  schema      Generate schema manifest for agent graphs
  template    Manage agent project templates
  mcp         Interact with configured MCP servers
  a2a         Interact with configured A2A agents
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  help        Help about any command

Flags:
      --config stringArray   Config overlay file(s) to merge (can be repeated; later files override earlier)
  -h, --help                 help for agentvisor
  -q, --quiet                Suppress all output except errors
  -v, --verbose              Show detailed output including debug info
      --version              version for agentvisor

Use "agentvisor [command] --help" for more information about a command.

License

License required

Released binaries require a valid Manetu license key. On first run, the CLI prompts you interactively — or set AGENTVISOR_LICENSE_KEY before starting. See the Licensing guide for activation instructions and where to obtain a key.

Upgrading

Re-run the install script to upgrade to the latest release:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/manetu/agentvisor/main/install.sh | sh

Next Steps

With Docker, Python, and the CLI installed, continue to Your First Agent to scaffold, run, and test a real chatbot agent in under five minutes — then follow the rest of the Tutorial to write policies and go from development to production.