Skip to main content

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://curia.mintlify.app/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Curia is single-tenant and self-hosted. This guide walks through getting a local instance running, organized into three tiers — start with the minimum and add services as needed.
TierServicesWhat you get
1 — MinimumAnthropic + PostgresAgents running, CLI and web app working
2 — Recommended+ Nylas + OpenAIEmail channel active, semantic search working
3 — Full+ Tavily + SignalWeb research skill, encrypted Signal messaging

​
Prerequisites

  • Node.js 22+ — check with node --version
  • Docker and Docker Compose — Postgres runs in Docker; install Docker Desktop or the standalone CLI
  • pnpm — npm install -g pnpm

​
Tier 1 — Minimum

Everything you need to run Curia and interact with it via the CLI and web app.
1

Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/josephfung/curia.git
cd curia
pnpm install
2

Configure .env

cp .env.example .env
Open .env and fill in:
# Postgres — credentials for the Docker Compose container
DB_USER=curia
DB_PASSWORD=curia_dev
DATABASE_URL=postgres://curia:curia_dev@localhost:5432/curia

# Anthropic — powers all agents
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# HTTP API authentication
API_TOKEN=your-secret-token-here

# Web app access
WEB_APP_BOOTSTRAP_SECRET=replace-with-a-long-random-secret

# Your identity
CEO_PRIMARY_EMAIL=you@yourdomain.com
TIMEZONE=America/Toronto
3

Start Postgres

docker compose up -d
This starts Postgres with pgvector and pgAudit. Confirm it’s healthy with docker compose ps.
4

Start Curia

pnpm local
On first run this applies all database migrations, then starts the full stack.
5

Verify

CLI: Type a message at the prompt to interact with Curia directly.Web app: Open http://localhost:3000 and enter your WEB_APP_BOOTSTRAP_SECRET. The knowledge graph browser is available once authenticated.
Adds the email channel and knowledge graph embeddings for a realistic development environment.

​
Nylas (Email)

Curia uses Nylas as its email layer — a unified API that handles IMAP/SMTP complexity across Gmail, Outlook, and other providers.
  1. Sign up at app.nylas.com (free tier is sufficient for development)
  2. Create an application and copy your API key
  3. Add a grant (connects an email account via OAuth) and copy the Grant ID
  4. Add to .env:
NYLAS_API_KEY=nyk_v0_...
NYLAS_GRANT_ID=<grant-id-from-dashboard>
NYLAS_SELF_EMAIL=curia@yourdomain.com
Restart Curia — the email channel activates automatically when all three Nylas vars are present.
For development, use a dedicated email account rather than your primary inbox. Curia reads and processes all incoming messages.
For multiple email accounts with per-account outbound policies, see Initial configuration.

​
OpenAI (Embeddings)

OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-small model powers entity memory and semantic search in the knowledge graph. Without it, lookups are exact-match only. 
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

​
Tier 3 — Full

Powers the web-search skill for researching topics and looking up current information. 
TAVILY_API_KEY=tvly-...
No restart required — the skill picks up the key on next use.

​
Signal

Signal messaging runs via signal-cli. The socket path is managed automatically by Docker Compose.
  1. Register a phone number with signal-cli and seed the signal-data Docker volume with the resulting credentials
  2. Add to .env:
SIGNAL_PHONE_NUMBER=+12223334444
Restart Curia — the Signal channel activates when SIGNAL_PHONE_NUMBER is set and the signal-data volume is populated.

​
What’s next

With Curia running, open the web app and go through the setup wizard — it walks you through naming your instance, setting its persona, and configuring the CEO profile. Then start a conversation via the CLI: 
pnpm local
Type a message at the prompt. You’re talking to Curia.

​
Troubleshooting

Node installed via nvm or fnm bundles its own CA store and doesn’t trust macOS system certificates. Export your system certs and point Node at them:
security find-certificate -a -p /System/Library/Keychains/SystemRootCertificates.keychain > ~/.config/curia/macos-ca-certs.pem
Then set in .env:
NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS=/Users/yourname/.config/curia/macos-ca-certs.pem
Make sure the Docker container is running (docker compose ps). If the container is healthy but Curia can’t connect, confirm the credentials in .env match the values in docker-compose.yml.
All three Nylas vars (NYLAS_API_KEY, NYLAS_GRANT_ID, NYLAS_SELF_EMAIL) must be set. If any are missing, the channel disables itself at startup with a log message indicating which variable is absent.

Initial configuration

Environment variables, multi-account email, and configuration layers.

Configuration reference

Every configurable setting: rate limits, security rules, knowledge graph decay, and more.