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Installation

Railtracks requires Python 3.10+. Install it using your preferred package manager:

SDK
pip install railtracks
SDK + local observability
pip install 'railtracks[visual]'

uv is a fast, modern Python package manager. If you don't have it yet, install it with pip install uv.

SDK
uv add railtracks
SDK + local observability
uv add 'railtracks[visual]'
SDK
conda install -c conda-forge railtracks
SDK + local observability
pip install 'railtracks[visual]' # (1)!
  1. From within your newly created Conda environment

Poetry manages dependencies and virtual environments together. Run these inside your project directory.

SDK
poetry add railtracks
SDK + local observability
poetry add 'railtracks[visual]'

The [visual] extra installs the Railtracks CLI's obervability components, which includes the local visualization server for observing agent runs in your browser. Read more at Observability.

Virtual Environments

A virtual environment isolates your project's dependencies from the rest of your system, it prevents version conflicts between projects and keeps your global Python installation clean. It's strongly recommended to use one.

Pick the tool that matches your setup:

venv is built into Python so no installation needed.

Create a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv
Activate (macOS / Linux)
source .venv/bin/activate
Activate (Windows)
.venv\Scripts\activate

Once activated, your terminal prompt will show (.venv). Any pip install commands will now install into this environment only.

uv creates and manages virtual environments automatically when you run uv add. To create one explicitly:

Create a virtual environment
uv venv
Activate (macOS / Linux)
source .venv/bin/activate
Activate (Windows)
.venv\Scripts\activate

conda manages both packages and environments. Create a dedicated environment for your project:

Create a conda environment
conda create -n my-project python=3.12
Activate the environment
conda activate my-project

You can replace my-project with any name you like.

Poetry automatically creates and manages a virtual environment for each project. No extra steps needed, just run poetry add or poetry install inside your project directory.

To see where the environment lives:

poetry env info