Install

Everything on kis.ai is installed and versioned through KVM, the Kisai Version Manager. You install KVM once, activate it with your licence, and from then on KVM installs and updates the CLI and every optional bundle.

  KVM  ──▶  activate with licence  ──▶  kvm list --remote  ──▶  kvm install <bundle>
                                         (what you are          (the CLI and the
                                          entitled to)           bundles you need)

1. Get KVM

KVM is distributed to licensed customers. Download it from your customer portal, or ask your kis.ai contact for a link.

Note

There is no anonymous download. The platform runs on your infrastructure under licence, so the installer is issued alongside it — the same way the licence itself is.

If you do not have a licence yet, talk to the solutions team.

2. Activate your licence

Your licence determines which bundles you can install and which platform capabilities are available. Activate once per machine:

kvm activate --license <your-licence-key>

Keep the key out of shell history and out of source control — treat it like any other credential. On a shared or CI machine, supply it from your secret store rather than typing it.

3. See what your licence includes

kvm list --remote

This is the step worth knowing about. Rather than reading a documentation page and hoping it matches what you bought, KVM tells you what your licence actually grants — the bundles available to you, and their versions.

kvm list without --remote shows what is installed locally, so the two together tell you what you have versus what you could have.

4. Install what you need

kvm install <bundle>

The kis CLI is the starting point; other bundles add commands to it. kis --help reflects what is installed, and commands that are available but not yet installed are listed separately with the bundle that provides them:

Not Installed  (use kvm to install):
  deployproduct  Deploy product       (kvm install kis-forge)
  db             Database management  (kvm install kis-forge)

So the CLI itself tells you what to install next, in the moment you need it.

5. Verify

kis version

You should see the version, commit hash and build timestamp. If kis is not found, check that KVM’s bin directory is on your PATH.

Keeping up to date

KVM manages versions, so upgrading is a KVM operation rather than a reinstall. Pin versions in CI and upgrade deliberately — the platform’s YAML schemas are versioned alongside the CLI, and a CLI newer than the platform you target will accept fields the platform rejects. See Spec.

Next

• Quickstart — define an entity and run a script, no services needed
• Getting Started — from an installed CLI to a running API
• CLI Reference — every command, generated from the binary