Second in the BugTraceAI series — the first post covered what it is and why "agentic" matters. This one is the hands-on part.
Getting BugTraceAI running takes roughly ten minutes: one install command, a short interactive menu and a model API key. No security expertise needed to get it going — finding things is the tool's job.
Screenshots are from an earlier Launcher build — the flow is the same; some labels and version numbers differ slightly in the current release.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BugTraceAI/BugTraceAI-Launcher/main/install.sh | bash
The script pulls down the Launcher — the guided installer for the whole ecosystem. Prefer to read before you run? Clone it and start it yourself:
git clone https://github.com/BugTraceAI/BugTraceAI-Launcher.git ~/bugtraceai-launcher
~/bugtraceai-launcher/launcher.sh
On Windows, run this from Git Bash or WSL — PowerShell has no bash.
The Launcher opens an interactive terminal menu. It checks your environment first (Docker, Compose, Git, curl, RAM and disk — each reported explicitly), then asks which product combination to install:
| Profile | What gets installed | Runtime |
|---|---|---|
terminal |
CLI terminal workspace (TUI) | Local Python or Docker |
web |
WEB dashboard, with either or both scanning engines | Docker |
full |
WEB + both scanning engines + CLI TUI | Docker |
server |
CLI web-scanning API/MCP | Local Python or Docker |
terminal-server |
CLI TUI + web-scanning API/MCP, no WEB | Local Python or Docker |
api |
BugTraceAI-API target engine, REST + MCP | Docker |
For a first look, full shows the complete picture; for the lightest start, choose terminal.
Next, choose how to run the installation:
You'll enter and verify your provider API key during this flow, and the final review shows the selected modules, runtime and ports before anything is written to disk.
When the install finishes, all services run locally in Docker — check them with:
docker ps
Five containers, all healthy — and nothing leaves your machine.
Open the web console — the default is http://localhost:6869, and the installer prints the exact URL for your setup:
Then go to Settings, add your LLM provider key and hit Test API Connection. Green means you're ready to save and scan:
Point it at your target — or at BugStore, the practice shop we built for exactly this:
Watch the six phases run: Recon → Discovery → Strategy → Exploit → Validate → Report. When it's done, export the report as Markdown or JSON, and open any finding to see its evidence chain — requests, code snippets and traces. That's the part that matters: you verify before you file.
BugTraceAI is built for authorized security testing only — only test applications you have explicit written permission to test.