Installation & Setup
Get Pipecat and its required services installed on your machine
Prerequisites
Pipecat requires Python 3.10 or higher. To check your Python version:
Accounts you’ll need
While you can use Pipecat without third-party services, integrating with the following providers will enhance your bot’s capabilities. Here’s what we recommend for getting started:
Essential services for the quickstart
Cartesia
Text-to-Speech: Required for the quickstart. Converts text to natural-sounding speech.
Recommended services for production
Daily
Transport: Handles real-time audio, video, and data exchange between bot and user. Recommended for production (our quickstart uses P2P WebRTC).
Deepgram
Speech-to-Text: Converts audio to text in realtime.
OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini
LLM Inference: Generates streaming text responses based on user input.
Cartesia / ElevenLabs / Rime
Text-to-Speech: Additional TTS options for production use.
Explore our full list of supported services for more integration options.
Setting up your project
Create a virtual environment
We recommend using a virtual environment to manage your dependencies:
Activate the virtual environment based on your operating system:
Install Pipecat
The pipecat-ai
Python module uses optional dependencies to keep your installation lightweight. This approach lets you include only the specific AI libraries you need for your project.
To install Pipecat with support for the recommended services above, use this command:
You can add this to your requirements.txt
file or include any combination of
supported integrations based on your
needs.
Configure your services
Cartesia Text-to-Speech Setup
- Visit Cartesia’s Voice library
- Find a voice you like and click the three dots at the end of the row
- Select
Copy ID
to get your voice ID - Go to Cartesia API keys and create an API key
Environment Setup
Create a .env
file in your project directory with your service credentials:
Make sure to add .env
to your .gitignore
file to avoid accidentally
committing sensitive API keys.
Next Steps
Build Your First Bot
Now that you have everything set up, proceed to the Quickstart guide to build your first Pipecat application.