talos init walkthrough

talos init is the canonical bootstrap. It is idempotent — re-running detects existing config and prompts to keep, reset, or partial-reset (re-do OAuth only).

pnpm dev:cli init
# or, after pnpm build + link:
talos init

Steps

The wizard walks you through seven steps:

1. OpenAI API key — written to .env with mode 0600.
2. Burner wallet — viem mnemonic generated, exported as a private key, persisted to ~/.config/talos/burner.json mode 0600. Set EVM_PRIVATE_KEY in your env to override.
3. KeeperHub OAuth — opens a browser, RFC 8252 loopback redirect, no manual API key.
4. Channel configuration — writes channels.yaml (CLI / Telegram / MCP enabled flags).
5. Daemon bearer token — written to ~/.config/talos/daemon.token mode 0600. Used by all thin clients to authenticate to talosd.
6. Database migrations — Drizzle migrations applied to PGLite at ~/.config/talos/db/.
7. Optional service install — launchd (macOS) or systemd-user (Linux) unit so talosd starts on login.

Flags

Flag	What it does
--non-interactive	Skip all prompts; fail if any required input is missing. For CI.
--skip-keeperhub	Defer the KeeperHub OAuth handoff. Talos starts without KH; mutating tools fail until you either finish OAuth via talos doctor --keeperhub or set KEEPERHUB_DISABLE_MUTATES=true to route mutates directly through viem (audit log stays on).
--reset-keeperhub	Forget existing KeeperHub credentials; re-run OAuth only.
--reset-wallet	Generate a fresh burner. Destructive — your old burner address is forgotten.

Idempotency

Re-running talos init shows you each existing piece of config and asks:

Found existing OpenAI API key in .env (sk-...gE7).
  [k] Keep
  [r] Reset (re-prompt)
  [s] Skip

Selecting Keep for everything is a no-op — useful for verifying state without rewriting anything.

Troubleshooting

If init fails after step 3, run talos doctor to check what’s missing. Doctor will print exactly which file is absent or malformed and how to recover it.