# Smarter – open-source, declarative AI authoring platform (Django, K8s-inspired)

> Source: <https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter>
> Published: 2026-08-16 22:25:17+00:00

Smarter is used as an instructional tool at [University of British Columbia](https://www.ubc.ca/)
for teaching AI.

Smarter is an open-source platform for building and running enterprise AI systems. Instead of writing orchestration code, you define agents, prompts, tools, and integrations using YAML manifests, then deploy them through a web UI, CLI, API, or Kubernetes.

Smarter replaces scattered AI orchestration code with a single declarative system for defining, testing, and running AI workflows across environments.

[1-click Quickstart](https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter-deploy)deployment with Docker.- Define AI resources declaratively using YAML manifests.
- Connect LLMs to APIs and SQL databases without writing custom orchestration code.
[command-line interface](https://smarter.sh/cli)for Windows, macOS, Linux and Docker[rest api](https://platform.smarter.sh/docs/swagger/)- web console / prompt engineer workbench
[SDKs](https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter-python),[UI components](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@smarter.sh/ui-chat),[CLI tools](https://smarter.sh/cli), and[IDE integrations](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=querium.smarter-manifest)for building on Smarter- publicly accessible
[online documentation](https://platform.smarter.sh/docs/)and self onboarding resources - open source UI components for jump starting projects

This setup uses Docker and takes around 20 minutes for first time installations.

-
Verify project requirements:

[Windows](/smarter-sh/smarter/blob/main/setup/windows),[macOS](/smarter-sh/smarter/blob/main/setup/macos),[Linux](/smarter-sh/smarter/blob/main/setup/ubuntu)operating system- 20Gib disk storage capacity
- 4Gib system memory
[Python 3.13](https://www.python.org/)[Docker](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/),[Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/).

-
Add your credentials to

[.env](/smarter-sh/smarter/blob/main/.env.example)in the root of this repo. See the inline documentation for details on the minimum environment variables that you will need to set. -
Initialize, build and run the application locally.

```
git clone https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter
make help           # scaffolds a .env file in the root of the repo
                    #
                    # ****************************
                    # STOP HERE!
                    # ****************************
                    # Add your credentials to .env located in the project root folder.
                    #
make init           # pulls Docker containers, creates a Python virtual environment,
                    # installs all packages, creates and initializes a
                    # local MySql database, preloads example AI resources
make run            # runs all docker containers and starts a
                    # local web server http://localhost:9357/
```

- Login at
[http://localhost:9357/login/](http://localhost:9357/login/)with user`admin@smarter.sh`

and password`smarter`

.

See these onboarding videos:

**Smarter** implements a yaml manifest-based approach to managing AI resources
that is inspired by the [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/) project.

It provides a unified, declarative way to define, configure, and orchestrate
the disparate resources that are required for creating and managing AI resources
that integrate to other enterprise resources like REST API's and Sql databases.
And it gives prompt engineering teams an intuitive workbench approach to
designing, prototyping, testing, deploying and managing powerful AI resources
for common corporate use cases including agentic workflows, customer facing chat
solutions, and more. It includes a separately managed
[React-based chat UI](https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter-chat) that is
compatible with a wide variety of front end ecosystems including NPM, Wordpress,
Squarespace, Drupal, Office 365, Sharepoint, .Net, Netsuite, salesforce.com, and
SAP. There is a
[Golang command-line interface](https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter-cli),
and a [PyPi package](https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter-python) for
integrating the API functions into your own Python projects. It is developed to
support prompt engineering teams working in large organizations. Accordingly,
**Smarter** provides common enterprise features such as credentials management,
team workgroup management, role-based security, accounting cost codes, and
logging and audit capabilities.

**Smarter** provides seamless integration and interoperation between LLMs from
DeepSeek, Google AI, Meta AI and OpenAI. It is LLM provider-agnostic, and
provides seamless integrations to a continuously evolving list of value added
services for security management, prompt content moderation, audit, cost
accounting, and workflow management. **Smarter** is cloud native and runs on
Kubernetes, on-site in your data center or in the cloud.

**Smarter** is cost effective when running at scale. It is extensible and
architected on the philosophy of a compact core that does not require
customization nor forking. It is horizontally scalable. It is natively
multi-tenant, and can be installed alongside your existing systems. ## Quickstart

See [ghcr.io/smarter-sh/charts/smarter](https://ghcr.io/smarter-sh/charts/smarter)
or [Artifact Hub](https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/project-smarter/smarter).

Read the Docs: [docs.smarter.sh](https://docs.smarter.sh/)

Please report bugs to the [GitHub Issues Page](https://github.com/smarter-sh/smarter/issues)
for this project.

Please see the [CONTRIBUTING](https://docs.smarter.sh/en/latest/smarter-framework/guides/contributing.html).