HackerAI

Getting started

Prerequisites

You'll need the following accounts:

Required:

• OpenRouter - AI model provider
• OpenAI - Content moderation
• E2B - Isolated cloud execution in Agent mode
• Convex - Database and backend
• WorkOS - Authentication and user management
• Trigger.dev - Required durable runtime for agent tasks

Optional:

• Amazon S3 - File storage (alternative to Convex storage)
• Perplexity - Web search functionality
• Jina AI - Web URL content retrieval
• Redis - Stream resumption
• Upstash Redis - Rate limiting
• PostHog - Analytics
• Stripe - Payment processing

Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/hackerai-tech/hackerai.git

Navigate to the project directory

cd hackerai

Install dependencies

pnpm install

Run the setup script

pnpm run setup

Start the development server

This runs both Next.js and Convex dev servers:

pnpm run dev

Or run them separately in two terminals:

pnpm run dev:next
pnpm run dev:convex

Run the Trigger.dev worker

Agent mode runs the agent loop on a Trigger.dev task. To use the agent locally:

1. Create a project at https://cloud.trigger.dev and copy your dev secret key (tr_dev_…) into .env.local as TRIGGER_SECRET_KEY.

2. In the Trigger.dev dashboard → your project → Environment Variables, add the env vars the task needs to run (these live on the worker, not on Vercel): NEXT_PUBLIC_CONVEX_URL, CONVEX_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, one cloud sandbox provider, plus any keys you use (PERPLEXITY_API_KEY, JINA_API_KEY, S3, etc.).

3. Start the worker in a third terminal:

   pnpm dev:trigger
   

   This starts the default Trigger.dev worker used by local Agent requests. To start an explicitly routed Trigger.dev branch instead, set a stable branch name with TRIGGER_DEV_BRANCH=my-local-agent pnpm dev:trigger. Only use that override when the request path is configured to target the same Trigger.dev branch.