Quickstart

Before you start

You need:

An LLM provider API key (see Providers)
Bun if you run from source — not needed for managed hosting or Docker

Choose a deployment path

Option 1: Try the demo

Explore a live instance without installing anything. Open https://demo.getnakama.cloud and sign in with:

Username: demo@getnakama.cloud
Password: demo1234

The demo is shared and reset periodically — use it to click around the dashboard, not for real data or API keys.

If you do not want to run your own server, use Nakama Cloud. Sign up, create an instance, and open your dedicated URL (for example acme.getnakama.cloud). The first 24 hours are free with no credit card required.

Complete the setup wizard in the browser and you are live. Skip to First-time setup.

Option 3: Docker

For a single-container deployment:

docker pull ghcr.io/ahmadrosid/nakama:latest
docker run -d -p 4310:4310 -v nakama-data:/nakama/data --name nakama ghcr.io/ahmadrosid/nakama:latest

Open http://localhost:4310. See Docker for build-from-source, volumes, and production notes.

Option 4: Local development

Clone the repository and install dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/ahmadrosid/nakama.git
cd nakama
bun install
bun run dev:web

Open:

Dashboard: http://localhost:3003
API server: http://127.0.0.1:4310
API docs: http://127.0.0.1:4310/docs

If you only want the API server:

bun run dev:server

On first run, Nakama asks for your provider and API key if they are not configured yet. Settings are saved in ~/.nakama/config.ini.

First-time setup

After Nakama is running:

Open the dashboard
Create the first admin account and first organization
Configure your model provider
Create or review profiles
Send a test message to the default profile

See First-time setup for the wizard walkthrough and Providers for supported LLM backends.

Common next steps

Connect a channel

Use the web dashboard, CLI, Telegram, WhatsApp, or Discord:

Understand the mental model

Most of Nakama fits four ideas: organization, profile, tool access, and channel. See Overview.

Next steps

Overview — what Nakama is and how to think about it
Providers — LLM API keys and model setup
Profiles — how to define each bot
Multi-tenancy — orgs, members, and roles
Documentation hub — full docs map