Installation

Install ServFlow Pro, start the server, and create your first account

ServFlow is an agent builder: you define AI agents and the workflows they run, and a Go engine serves them. This guide installs the servflow-pro binary, starts an instance, and walks through the first-run account setup.

Setting up a local environment with tracing and debugging? See Local Environment Setup.

Prerequisites

• A terminal
• One of: Docker, Homebrew, npm, or Go — depending on the method you pick

Quick start

# Homebrew (macOS/Linux)
brew install Servflow/servflow/servflow-pro
servflow-pro start --config config.toml --dashboard

# Or Docker
docker run -p 8080:8080 servflow/servflow-pro

Then open http://localhost:8080/dashboard and create your account.

One port serves everything. The engine owns the root path, and --dashboard mounts the builder UI under /dashboard on that same port. Earlier versions used a separate port for the dashboard; they no longer do.

Installation methods

Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew install Servflow/servflow/servflow-pro
servflow-pro --version

npm

npm install -g servflow-pro
servflow-pro --version

Docker

docker pull servflow/servflow-pro:latest

Run with default configuration:

docker run -p 8080:8080 servflow/servflow-pro

Run with a custom configuration and persistent storage:

docker run -d \
  --name servflow-pro \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v $(pwd)/config.toml:/data/config.toml \
  -v $(pwd)/configs:/data/configs \
  -v $(pwd)/data:/data \
  servflow/servflow-pro

This exposes port 8080 for the engine, the API, and the dashboard, and mounts your configuration and data directories so agents survive restarts.

Binary downloads

Download pre-built binaries from the Releases page. Available for Linux (x86_64, arm64) and macOS (x86_64, arm64).

tar -xzf servflow-pro_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
chmod +x servflow-pro
./servflow-pro start --config config.toml --dashboard

From source

git clone https://github.com/Servflow/servflow-pro.git
cd servflow-pro
go build -o servflow-pro
./servflow-pro start --config config.toml --dashboard

Building from source requires Go 1.21 or later.

Create a configuration file

ServFlow reads a TOML file. Only server.config_folder is required:

[server]
port = "8080"
config_folder = "./configs"
env = "production"

[sqlite]
path = "./data/servflow.db"
master_key = "your-secure-master-key"

Never commit master_key to version control. Set it with the SERVFLOW_SQLITE_MASTER_KEY environment variable in production.

SQLite stores agents, workflow configs, secrets, integrations, and user accounts. Running without it falls back to file-based storage and disables secrets management, OAuth integrations, and the account system.

See the Configuration Reference for every option.

Start the server

servflow-pro start --config config.toml --dashboard

Flag	Description
--config, -c	Path to the TOML configuration file. Defaults to ~/.servflow/config.toml
--dashboard	Mount the visual builder under /dashboard
--import-configs	Import workflow configs from the config folder into SQLite. Requires --dashboard

Without --dashboard, only the engine and API run — see Running ServFlow.

First run: create your account

The dashboard is gated by default (authentication.mode = "local"). On a fresh instance with no accounts yet:

1. Open the dashboard

   Navigate to http://localhost:8080/dashboard.

2. Complete setup

   A first-run setup wizard collects instance settings — your workspaces directory and whether to enable tracing. These are written to your config.toml.

   Setup settings are read once at startup, so ServFlow asks you to restart the server after saving them.

3. Create the first account

   Register with an email and a password of at least 8 characters. The first account is created without authentication to bootstrap the instance; afterwards, creating more accounts requires being signed in.

4. Sign in

   Use those credentials on the sign-in screen. Sessions are opaque tokens stored in the database, so they survive restarts.

Setup and first-account registration are only available while no account exists. Once one does, both are closed off.

To disable the gate entirely on a trusted local machine, set mode = "none":

[authentication]
mode = "none"

Verify the installation

With the server running, create an agent and its first workflow in the dashboard, or check the CLI can reach your store:

servflow-pro resource config list --config config.toml

Next steps

Quickstart

Deploy your first API with the dashboard or declaratively.

Configuration Reference

Every TOML option and environment variable.

Running ServFlow

What the server serves, and how to deploy it.

Secrets Management

Store API keys and credentials securely.