System requirements
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Node.js | v18+ with npm (runs the TypeScript API server via tsx) |
| Python 3 | Required for the pdfplumber vision worker used in document parsing |
| npm | Bundled with Node.js; used to install dependencies and run scripts |
External services
Quark depends on several managed services. All services listed below offer free tiers — no credit card is required to sign up.| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Groq / xAI | LLM inference |
| VoyageAI | Text embeddings |
| Unstructured.io | Document parsing and chunking |
| Qdrant | Vector database |
| Mem0 | Conversation memory |
| Upstash | Serverless Redis |
| ElasticLake | S3-compatible object storage |
| Supabase | Auth and PostgreSQL database |
You must create accounts and obtain API credentials for each service before starting the server. See the Environment variables page for the full list of required keys.
Setup
Run the setup script
The script copies
.env.example to .env, creates a Python virtual environment, installs Python and Node.js dependencies, and applies Supabase database migrations.Fill in your environment variables
Open the generated See Environment variables for a full reference of every variable.
.env file and replace every placeholder value with your actual API keys and URLs.Start the server
npm run dev to start the API server with live reload. Use npm run cli to run Quark’s interactive command-line interface instead.See Running the API server for production start instructions.