Installing the FlexAI CLI

System requirements

The FlexAI CLI is available for the following operating systems and versions:

Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, 24.04
macOS 14 and above
Windows 10 and Windows 11 (through WSL2 in both cases)

Installation Steps

Run the installation script

curl -fsSL https://cli.flex.ai/install.sh | sh

You can review the installation script before running it:

View the script

#!/bin/sh

# Install script for the Flex CLI.
# Largely inspired by the excellent https://get.pulumi.com.

set -e

RESET="\\033[0m"
RED="\\033[31;1m"
GREEN="\\033[32;1m"
YELLOW="\\033[33;1m"
BLUE="\\033[34;1m"
WHITE="\\033[37;1m"

print_unsupported_platform()
{
    >&2 say_red "error: Your platform is not currently supported."
    >&2 say_red "       We only support 64-bit versions of Linux and macOS."
}

say_green()
{
    [ -z "${SILENT}" ] && printf "%b%s%b\\n" "${GREEN}" "$1" "${RESET}"
    return 0
}

say_red()
{
    printf "%b%s%b\\n" "${RED}" "$1" "${RESET}"
}

say_yellow()
{
    [ -z "${SILENT}" ] && printf "%b%s%b\\n" "${YELLOW}" "$1" "${RESET}"
    return 0
}

say_blue()
{
    [ -z "${SILENT}" ] && printf "%b%s%b\\n" "${BLUE}" "$1" "${RESET}"
    return 0
}

say_white()
{
    [ -z "${SILENT}" ] && printf "%b%s%b\\n" "${WHITE}" "$1" "${RESET}"
    return 0
}

at_exit()
{
    # shellcheck disable=SC2181
    # https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC2181
    # Disable because we don't actually know the command we're running
    if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then
        >&2 say_red
        >&2 say_red "Looks like something has gone wrong!"
    fi
}

trap at_exit EXIT

BASE_URL="https://cli.flex.ai"
SILENT=""
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
    case "$1" in
        --url)
            BASE_URL=$2
            shift
            ;;
        --silent)
            SILENT="--silent"
            ;;
     esac
     shift
done

# Fetch the identifier of the latest version.
if ! VERSION=$(curl --retry 3 --fail --silent -L "$BASE_URL/latest"); then
    >&2 say_red "error: could not determine latest version of Flex"
    exit 1
fi

OS=""
case $(uname) in
    "Linux") OS="linux";;
    "Darwin") OS="darwin";;
    *)
        print_unsupported_platform
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

case $(uname -m) in
    "x86_64") ;;
    "arm64") ;;
    "aarch64") ;;
    *)
        print_unsupported_platform
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

TARBALL_URL="$BASE_URL/bin/${VERSION}/flex-cli-${VERSION}-${OS}64.tar.gz"
CONFIG_URL="$BASE_URL/config.yaml"
FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT="${HOME}/.flexai"
FLEX_CLI="${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin/flexai"

if [ -d "${FLEX_CLI}" ]; then
    say_red "error: ${FLEX_CLI} already exists and is a directory, refusing to proceed."
    exit 1
elif [ ! -f "${FLEX_CLI}" ]; then
    say_blue "=== Installing Flex ${VERSION} ==="
else
    say_blue "=== Upgrading Flex $(${FLEX_CLI} version) to ${VERSION} ==="
fi

TARBALL_DEST=$(mktemp -t flex.tar.gz.XXXXXXXXXX)

download_tarball() {
    say_white "+ Downloading ${TARBALL_URL}..."
    if ! curl --fail ${SILENT} -L \
        -o "${TARBALL_DEST}" "${TARBALL_URL}"; then
        say_red "error: failed to download"
        return 1
    fi
}

if download_tarball; then
    say_white "+ Extracting to ${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin"

    # If `~/.flex/bin` exists, remove previous files with a flex prefix
    if [ -e "${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin" ]; then
        rm -f "${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin"/flex*
    fi

    mkdir -p "${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin"
    tar zxf "${TARBALL_DEST}" -C "${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin"

    rm -f "${TARBALL_DEST}"
else
    >&2 say_red "error: failed to download ${TARBALL_URL}"
    exit 1
fi

CONFIG_DEST=$(mktemp -t flex-config.yaml.XXXXXXXXXX)

download_config() {
    say_white "+ Downloading ${BASE_URL}/config.yaml..."
    if ! curl --fail ${SILENT} -L \
        -o "${CONFIG_DEST}" "${CONFIG_URL}"; then
        say_red "error: failed to download"
        return 1
    fi
}

if download_config; then
    say_white "+ Configuring"
    if ! "${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin/flexai" bootstrap "${CONFIG_DEST}"; then
        >&2 say_red "error: failed to configure Flex"
        exit 1
    fi
else
     >&2 say_red "error: failed to download ${CONFIG_URL}"
    exit 1
fi

say_blue
say_blue "=== Flex is now installed! ==="
say_white "+ Please add ${FLEX_INSTALL_ROOT}/bin to your \$PATH"
say_green "+ Enjoy!"

Add it to your system’s $PATH

Add the ~/.flexai/bin directory to your $PATH:
- bash
- zsh
- fish
- WSL2
Terminal window
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.flexai/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc
Terminal window
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.flexai/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc
Terminal window
echo 'set -gx PATH $PATH $HOME/.flexai/bin' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish && source ~/.config/fish/config.fish
Terminal window
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.flexai/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc
Please note that you will need to update the PATH variable of your WSL2 Linux environment, not the Windows one.

The default Linux distribution installed with WSL2 is Ubuntu, which by default uses the bash shell:

Verify your installation

As a first step, it’s always a good idea to verify your system can connect to FlexAI and make sure CLI is properly installed.

That’s the purpose of the doctor command:

flexai doctor

You should get a message like this:

Running doctor checks...
[1/4] ✅ The FlexAI binary file is part of the system's $PATH variable
[2/4] ✅ Successfully connected to the FlexAI API server
[3/4] ✅ Successfully connected to the FlexAI update server
[4/4] ✅ Using the latest FlexAI CLI version available
Your system is healthy

Logging in

The next step is to log in and authenticate your CLI.

Uninstalling the FlexAI CLI

If you ever need to uninstall the FlexAI CLI, you can do so by removing both the ~/.flexai directory and the reference to the flexai binary from your $PATH variable.