Install on Linux 🐧

✅ Requirements

Rust
Miniconda (recommended) 🐍
Python 3.11
PyTorch 2.4.0

1. Python via conda 🧪

# Install Miniconda (example for Debian/Ubuntu)
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y wget bzip2

wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

# Create and activate environment
conda create -n aj python=3.11 -y
conda activate aj

2. Install PyTorch 2.4.0 🧱

pip install torch==2.4.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cp

3. Environment setup 🌿

Add to your shell init (e.g., ~/.zshrc):

export LIBTORCH_USE_PYTORCH=1
export LIBTORCH="$HOME/miniconda3/envs/aj/lib/python3.11/site-packages/torch"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBTORCH/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

4. Install from crates.io and initialize 📦

cargo install awful_aj
cargo init

cargo init creates:

~/.config/aj/
~/.config/aj/config.yaml
~/.config/aj/templates/
~/.config/aj/templates/default.yaml
~/.config/aj/templates/simple_question.yaml

5. Prepare the Session Database (SQLite) 📂

aj stores sessions, messages, and configs in a local SQLite3 database (aj.db). You have two ways to provision it:

Option A — Without Diesel CLI (raw sqlite3)

This is the minimal approach if you don’t want extra tooling.

sqlite3 ~/.config/aj/aj.db <<'SQL'
PRAGMA foreign_keys = ON;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS conversations (
  id            INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL,
  session_name  TEXT NOT NULL
);

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS messages (
  id               INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL,
  role             TEXT NOT NULL,
  content          TEXT NOT NULL,
  dynamic          BOOLEAN NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
  conversation_id  INTEGER,
  FOREIGN KEY(conversation_id) REFERENCES conversations(id) ON DELETE CASCADE
);

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS awful_configs (
  id                                 INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL,
  api_base                            TEXT NOT NULL,
  api_key                             TEXT NOT NULL,
  model                               TEXT NOT NULL,
  context_max_tokens                  INTEGER NOT NULL,
  assistant_minimum_context_tokens    INTEGER NOT NULL,
  stop_words                          TEXT NOT NULL,
  conversation_id                     INTEGER,
  FOREIGN KEY(conversation_id) REFERENCES conversations(id) ON DELETE CASCADE
);
SQL

Verify tables:

sqlite3 ~/.config/aj/aj.db ".tables"

Option B — With Diesel CLI 🛠️

This is recommended if you want migrations and a typed schema.rs.

Grab the awful_aj git repo.

git clone https://github.com/graves/awful_aj
cd awful_aj

Install Diesel CLI for SQLite.

cargo install diesel_cli --no-default-features --features sqlite

Configure database URL and run migrations.

export DATABASE_URL="$HOME/.config/aj/aj.db"
diesel migration run

6. First‑run model download ⤵️

On first use needing embeddings, aj downloads all-mini-lm-l12-v2 from https://awfulsec.com/bigfiles/all-mini-lm-l12-v2.zip into:

~/.config/aj/

You’re ready! ✅

Try:

aj ask "Hello from macOS!"

Awful Jade