Installation

The fastest way to install Tell is the one-liner in the Quickstart. This page covers building from source and custom feature profiles.

Build from source

Requires Rust 1.80+ and Cargo:

git clone https://github.com/tell-rs/tell.git
cd tell
cargo install --path crates/tell

This installs the tell binary with all features enabled — sources, sinks, analytics, TUI, MCP, and LLM.

Feature profiles

Build with a reduced feature set for specific deployments:

# Full installation (default) — all sources, sinks, analytics, TUI, MCP, LLM
cargo install --path crates/tell

# OT collector — TCP + syslog sources, disk + forwarder sinks
cargo install --path crates/tell --no-default-features --features ot-collector

# OT forwarder — TCP + syslog sources, forwarder sink only
cargo install --path crates/tell --no-default-features --features ot-forwarder

The ot-collector and ot-forwarder profiles produce smaller binaries suited for edge deployments and air-gapped networks.

Verify

tell --help
tell --version

With no arguments, tell opens the TUI. Use tell run to start the server in daemon mode.

Configuration lookup

Tell looks for config files in this order:

--config <path> (explicit flag)
configs/config.toml (current directory)
config.toml (current directory)

If no config file is found, Tell starts with defaults: TCP source on port 50000 routing to stdout. See Pipeline Configuration for the full config reference.

CLI

AI Integration

Running Tell

Installation

Build from source

Feature profiles

Verify

Configuration lookup

​Build from source

​Feature profiles

​Verify

​Configuration lookup

Build from source

Feature profiles

Verify

Configuration lookup