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Installation#

This page gets you from nothing to a running Lens Prism agent you can chat with. For the full detail of each install method, follow the links to the dedicated guides.

Prerequisites#

  • An LLM provider credential. Prism talks to one model provider per runtime — AWS Bedrock or Azure (Claude via Microsoft Foundry). Set the credential for your provider before you chat. See Configuration for the exact variables.
  • A supported platform. Native binaries are published for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Linux (x64 and arm64), and Windows (x64). The Docker image runs on linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.

Slack and the observability integrations are optional — the agent starts without them. Add them when you need them.

Install natively#

To install Prism and start the runtime:

  1. Optional. Export your model provider credential so the installer bakes it into the service config. For Bedrock:

    export AWS_BEARER_TOKEN_BEDROCK=<YOUR-KEY>

  2. Run the one-line installer.

    curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/prism-agent/main/install.sh | sh

    irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/prism-agent/main/install.ps1 | iex

The installer downloads the latest release, installs the prism and prism-server binaries into ~/.prism (%USERPROFILE%\.prism on Windows), puts prism on your PATH, and registers prism-server to run in the background. If you didn't export a credential, the installer writes ~/.prism/.env with empty placeholders — edit that file and restart the service. See Install natively for what gets installed and how to manage the service, and Configuration for provider credentials.

To run a container instead, see Run with Docker.

Verify the runtime#

The runtime listens on port 3003. To check that it's up:

curl http://localhost:3003/health

Start your first conversation#

To chat with the agent, open the web UI at http://localhost:3003, or launch the terminal UI:

prism

On a fresh install the agent walks you through a short bootstrap conversation to learn who you are and what you want it to do. It writes your answers into its own identity documents and then clears the bootstrap prompt. See Agent identity for what it sets up.

To give the agent standing work, configure its heartbeat and scheduled tasks. To wire it into Slack, see Slack.

Other ways to run#

  • Run with Docker pulls the published image and runs the agent in a container with a persistent data volume.
  • Run with Lens Agents provisions Prism as a governed managed agent from the built-in template, with policy-gated egress and managed inference.