jan/docs/docs/guides/02-installation/04-from-source.md

title	slug	description	keywords
From Source	/install/from-source	Jan is a ChatGPT-alternative that runs on your own computer, with a local API server.	Jan AI Jan ChatGPT alternative local AI private AI conversational AI no-subscription fee large language model

Install Jan from Source

Installation

Pre-requisites

Before proceeding with the installation of Jan from source, ensure that the following software versions are installed on your system:

• Node.js version 20.0.0 or higher
• Yarn version 1.22.0 or higher

Instructions

Note: This instruction is tested on MacOS only.

1. Clone the Jan repository from GitHub

git clone https://github.com/janhq/jan
git checkout DESIRED_BRANCH
cd jan

2. Install the required dependencies using Yarn

yarn install

# Build core module
yarn build:core

# Packing base plugins
yarn build:plugins

# Packing uikit
yarn build:uikit

3. Run development and using Jan

yarn dev

This will start the development server and open the desktop app. During this step, you may encounter notifications about installing base plugins. Simply click OK and Next to continue.

For production build

Build the app for macOS M1/M2 for production and place the result in the dist folder

# Do step 1 and 2 in previous section
git clone https://github.com/janhq/jan
cd jan
yarn install

# Build core module
yarn build:core

# Package base plugins
yarn build:plugins

# Packing uikit
yarn build:uikit

# Build the app
yarn build

This completes the installation process for Jan from source. The production-ready app for macOS can be found in the dist folder.