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Installation

On Linux, macOS, or Windows Git Bash, install Calkit and uv (if not already installed) with:

curl -LsSf install.calkit.org | sh

Or with Windows Command Prompt or PowerShell:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm install-ps1.calkit.org | iex"

If you already have uv installed, install Calkit with:

uv tool install calkit-python

You can also install with your system Python:

pip install calkit-python

To effectively use Calkit, you'll want to ensure Git is installed and properly configured. You may also want to install Docker, since that is the default method by which LaTeX environments are created. If you want to use the Calkit Cloud for collaboration and backup as a DVC remote, you can set up cloud integration with:

calkit cloud login

If you use AI agents like Claude, Copilot, or Codex, see AI tools to learn how to install agent skills for working with Calkit.

Use without installing

If you want to use Calkit without installing it, you can use uv's uvx command to run it directly:

uvx calk9 --help

Nix

Calkit ships a flake at the root of its repo, so Nix users can pull the CLI into their environments alongside their other tools.

Run it ad hoc without installing:

nix run github:calkit/calkit -- --help

Drop into a shell that has calkit, git, and uv on PATH:

nix shell github:calkit/calkit

Add it to your own flake.nix as an input:

{
  inputs.calkit.url = "github:calkit/calkit";
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, calkit }: {
    devShells.x86_64-linux.default =
      nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.mkShell {
        packages = [ calkit.packages.x86_64-linux.default ];
      };
  };
}

Then nix develop will give you a shell with the Calkit CLI ready to use. To pin a specific Calkit release inside the shell, set the CALKIT_VERSION environment variable (e.g. CALKIT_VERSION=0.41.0) before invoking calkit.

The flake is currently a thin wrapper around uvx --from calkit-python calkit. It depends on uv from nixpkgs and fetches the published wheel from PyPI on first use. This trades a fully Nix-native build for zero version-drift maintenance, and avoids the macOS docx2pdf / appscript and JupyterLab labextension build issues that block a pure nixpkgs derivation today. If you want a fully nixpkgs-native build, see the community calkit-nix flake.

Nix isn't supported natively on Windows; run Calkit inside WSL2 and use the flake there.

Running against a specific version

If a project requires a Calkit version other than the one you have installed, use the top-level --use-version flag to re-invoke the CLI under that release without changing your installation:

calkit --use-version 0.38 run

This re-execs the CLI via uvx --from calkit-python@<version> calkit, so it requires uv on PATH. You can also declare a minimum version in calkit.yaml; see Pinning the Calkit CLI version.

Calkit Assistant

For Windows users, the Calkit Assistant app is the easiest way to get everything set up and ready to work in VS Code, which can then be used as the primary app for working on all scientific or analytical computing projects.

Calkit Assistant