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Installation

Complete installation guide for Gobbler.

Prerequisites

Before installing Gobbler, ensure you have:

Requirement Version Check Command Required
Python 3.11+ python3 --version Yes
uv Latest uv --version Yes
Docker Latest docker --version For web/docs
ffmpeg Latest ffmpeg -version For video

Installing Prerequisites

# Install uv (Python package manager)
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Install ffmpeg (for audio extraction from video)
brew install ffmpeg

# Docker Desktop from https://docs.docker.com/desktop/mac/install/

# Install uv
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Install ffmpeg
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg  # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install ffmpeg      # Fedora

# Docker from https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/

# Install uv
powershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

# Install ffmpeg from https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

# Docker Desktop from https://docs.docker.com/desktop/windows/install/

Installation Steps

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/dylanisaac/gobbler.git
cd gobbler

2. Install Dependencies

# Basic installation
make install

# With development dependencies (for contributing)
make dev

# Optional: For browser automation features
uv run playwright install chromium

3. Start Docker Services (Optional)

Docker services are needed for:

  • Web scraping (Crawl4AI)
  • Document conversion (Docling)

Docker Resource Requirements

  • Docling needs ~8GB RAM
  • Crawl4AI needs ~2GB RAM
  • Initial Docker image downloads can be large
# Start all services
make start-docker

# Check status
make status

4. Verify Installation

make verify

You should see:

✅ Python 3.11+ detected
✅ uv installed
✅ Gobbler MCP installed
✅ Crawl4AI: Healthy
✅ Docling: Healthy

What Works Without Docker

These features work immediately without Docker:

Feature Backend
YouTube transcripts youtube-transcript-api
Audio transcription faster-whisper (local)
YouTube downloads yt-dlp

Claude Code Integration

Add to Claude Code

# Show installation command
make claude-install

# Run the displayed command:
claude mcp add gobbler-mcp -- uv --directory /path/to/gobbler run gobbler-mcp

Manual Configuration

Add to ~/.mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gobbler-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/path/to/gobbler",
        "run",
        "gobbler-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Code after configuration.

Configuration

Gobbler uses a YAML configuration file at ~/.config/gobbler/config.yml:

services:
  docling: "http://localhost:5001"
  crawl4ai: "http://localhost:11235"

storage:
  type: "sqlite"
  path: "~/.config/gobbler/jobs.db"

logging:
  level: "INFO"

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"Service unavailable"

# Start Docker services
make start-docker

# Check status
make status

"Python 3.11+ required"

Install Python 3.11 or higher from python.org.

"uv not found"

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Run Diagnostics

make diagnose

This checks all prerequisites and provides actionable fixes.

Next Steps