Install guide

PARTLY RUNNABLE BY YOU. The Elixir core, the web UI, the flagellum laboratory and most gates install on any machine. The studio, the operator plane and the broadcast need Windows, a GPU, and software you must install yourself. Each section below says which it is.

Every version on this page is quoted from the file that declares it. Where two files disagree, both are shown and the disagreement is named rather than smoothed over — because a prerequisite list that resolves conflicts silently will send you to the wrong version and give you no way to find out why.

The honest headline first

There is no .tool-versions, no .nvmrc and no .python-version anywhere in this estate. Every version below comes from a build file, a CI workflow or prose. Nothing is centrally pinned, and that is why three of them disagree.

Prerequisites

Elixir and OTP — required for everything

The UI's floor disagrees and it is stale. The core was raised to 1.18 because the control plane calls a module built into 1.18; the UI's file was never raised. CI runs 1.18 for both, so nothing fails — which is precisely why it has stayed wrong. Install 1.18 on OTP 27.

Node

Install Node 22 or later. It satisfies every declaration that exists. The 20+ figure is prose and is the oldest of the three.

Python — only for the experiment pipeline

3.12 in continuous integration. The laboratory pins its libraries but not the interpreter; the recorded audit environment was 3.12 and the audit notes it matched by luck rather than by constraint.

Java — only for Minecraft

Java 11 specifically. The world is pinned to Minecraft 1.16.5, and that version needs Java 11. If you have only a modern JDK this will fail, and the failure will not obviously say so.

The rest, by what needs them

Install: the Elixir core

Nothing to fetch. Zero dependencies by construction.

mix compile

mix test

The exact ordered sequence continuous integration runs, which is the sequence to copy:

1. compile with warnings as errors, forced
2. check formatting
3. mix test
4. regenerate the golden artifact
5. git diff --exit-code on it — the drift guard
6. record a run
7. verify the file just written

Steps 4 and 5 are a pair and so are 6 and 7. Running either half alone proves nothing.

There is one thing worth knowing about that workflow: it declares which branches it runs on, and for a long time the real working branch was not among them — so it had never run, once, on any commit. The fix is in the file; the lesson is that a green badge and a configured pipeline are different claims.

Install: the web UI

This is the only part with package dependencies.

cd ui && mix deps.get && mix phx.server

Then open the UI on port 4000.

Install: Minecraft — one time, in this order

bash scripts/minecraft_setup.sh

This downloads the server jar. It deliberately does not accept the licence for you:

# NOTE: this DOWNLOADS the Paper server jar (~40MB from papermc.io) and you must
# accept Mojang's EULA yourself (it is your legal agreement) before the server
# will run. This script does NOT accept the EULA for you.

So the next step is yours:

echo "eula=true" > mcserver/eula.txt

Then generate the world:

cd mcserver && java -jar paper.jar nogui

If the jar download 404s, the build number has aged out; the script takes an override environment variable and the runbook gives the form.

Change the RCON password before you do anything else

The setup script writes a server properties file containing a default RCON password, and several documents in this estate reprint it. RCON is remote console access to your Minecraft server. Open mcserver/server.properties, set rcon.password to something you choose, and use that value wherever a command below wants a password.

This is not a hypothetical tidiness point. On 2026-08-01 a scan of this very site found that default published on six pages, alongside a shared secret for the Erlang runtime on nine more — both are now redacted, and the publishing gate has a rule for credential assignments that it did not have before. A default that ships in a setup script is a default that ends up in production somewhere.

Install: the flagellum laboratory

npm install

npm run dev

Release validation, in this order:

npm ci

npm run lint

npx tsc --noEmit

npm audit

Production and development dependency risk are reported separately, because a development-only advisory and a runtime advisory are different facts and merging them loses the one that matters.

Install: the studio and the operator plane

Windows only. Read the broadcast suite before running any of it, and set an OBS WebSocket password first.

powershell -File viewer/gen_auto_cert.ps1

powershell -File viewer/install_lan_cert.ps1

The second one installs a local self-signed certificate into the current user's trust store. Without it, OBS's embedded browser refuses the local pages and renders them black — which looks like a broken overlay and is a certificate problem.

DNS routing on Windows, if you need it, requires an elevated shell and is reversible:

powershell -File viewer/apply_nrpt.ps1

powershell -File viewer/diag_dns.ps1

Then the whole stack:

powershell -File viewer/studio_up.ps1

Install: the native HUD

Windows only, and it needs an elevated shell because it registers a real service and a scheduled task.

powershell -File viewer/hud/native/hud_widget_boot_install.ps1

powershell -File viewer/hud/native/_install_widget_launcher_elevated.ps1

powershell -File viewer/hud/native/_swap_service_elevated.ps1

powershell -File viewer/hud/hud_service_install.ps1

powershell -File viewer/hud/hud_service_uninstall.ps1

The service installer above is retired and refuses to run — it is listed because it still exists and you will find it. The native path replaced it.

The three declarations that disagree

Stated together, because they are the ones most likely to cost you an hour:

1. Elixir floor — core says 1.18, the UI says 1.17. Use 1.18.
2. Node — CI says 22, prose says 20+, the laboratory says 22.13+. Use 22 or later.
3. Python — 3.12 in CI, unpinned in the laboratory. Use 3.12.

What you will not be able to install

Stated plainly, because this is the part most install guides leave out.

• The source repositories are private. The first command in the estate's own launch guide is a clone that will ask a stranger for credentials they do not have. This documentation site is public; the code behind it is not, yet.
• The private network estate does not exist for you. Several components address hosts on a WireGuard mesh with a private DNS zone. On any other machine those resolve to nothing.
• Absolute paths are hard-coded in several places — the OBS binary, the media server binary, a log directory, and the cross-repository link that draws the project plan. On any other machine, the last of those renders an empty plan rather than failing loudly.
• The observed-experiment reproduction needs a dataset that is not redistributed, and the widest cross-study check needs a multi-gigabyte raw cache.
• Go-live needs a presence token that nothing in the repository mints, on purpose. See the broadcast suite.
• Three units of the containerised platform were never written. The multilingual long-form broadcast cannot be started by anyone, including the operator.

Next

• Run it — every entry point with its real command.
• Maintenance — watchdogs, health checks, backups and what breaks.