Friends & Family Beta — feedback welcome

Install InTouch in 5 Minutes

Get InTouch running on your laptop and have your first AI-assisted automation by the end of this page. Twelve short steps. No Docker, no cloud account, no credit card.

Step 1

Before you start

InTouch is a single self-contained server plus a web UI. Both run on anything Java runs on. You need four things:

  • Java 17 or newer. Check with java -version. If you need it, grab the free Adoptium Temurin build.
  • Python 3 for the installer (one script, runs once).
  • About 500 MB of disk. Most of that is the runtime JARs and the embedded Derby database.
  • An AI provider account. We recommend Groq — free, no credit card. Alternatives in Step 5.

OS-wise: Linux, macOS, and Windows 10/11 are all fine.

Step 2

Download

One zip file, about 200 MB. It contains the server, the UI, the installer, and a handful of example skills and jobs to get you oriented.

Download InTouch Personal Edition (zip)

intouch-personal-edition-8.0.0.zip · size and SHA-256 listed on the downloads page once the build is final.

Step 3

Install

Unpack the zip and run the installer. The installer asks where to install and which port to use; the defaults are fine for a first try.

unzip intouch-personal-edition-8.0.0.zip
cd intouch-personal-edition
python install.py

The installer drops everything under the install directory you choose. Nothing is written outside it.

Step 4

Get a free AI provider key

InTouch can talk to any of nine AI providers. For first-time setup we recommend Groq — it has a free tier with no credit card, and inference is fast enough that the assistant feels snappy.

Recommended: Groq

  1. Sign up at console.groq.com (Google or GitHub login works).
  2. Go to API Keys → Create API Key. Name it "InTouch" and click create.
  3. Copy the key — it starts with gsk_… and you only see it once. Paste it somewhere safe for the next steps.

Alternatives if you prefer

Step 5

First launch

InTouch runs as two processes: a server and a UI. Start them in separate terminals so you can watch the logs.

cd /path/to/intouch-personal-edition
bin/startserver    # terminal 1
bin/startui        # terminal 2

Give the server about 15 seconds to come up. Then open http://localhost:2200 in your browser.

Step 6

First login

The Personal edition is single-user with fixed defaults:

  • Username: intouch
  • Password: blueisle

These are intentionally immutable on Personal — it's a single-user, friction-free model. If you need multi-user, RBAC, and password rotation, that's what the Team / Department / Enterprise editions exist for.

Step 7

Add your AI provider credential

Credentials live in a vault — jobs reference them by name, never paste keys into scripts.

  1. Sidebar → Credentials → Add
  2. Type: groq (or anthropic / openai if you chose those in Step 4)
  3. Name: anything — My Groq Key is fine
  4. Group: Default Credentials
  5. Secret: paste the key from Step 4
  6. Save
Step 8

Configure the AI Assistant

The AI Assistant has its own provider settings (separate from the credential you just added — the credential is for jobs/tasks; this is what powers the chat).

  1. Sidebar → System → AI Assistant
  2. Provider: Groq (or whatever you used in Step 4 and Step 7)
  3. API Key: paste the same key here (or your provider's key if you went with a different one)
  4. Model: pick from the list — the default for each provider is the recommended starting point
  5. Enabled: check the box
  6. Save
Step 9

Say hi

Open the AI Assistant chat (sidebar → the chat icon, or wherever the current build labels it). Type something simple:

What can you help me with?

You should get a response within a second or two if you're on Groq. Try asking it to list your jobs, summarize a recent run, or build a new automation. The assistant has tool-use access to your InTouch server — it can read state and take actions on your behalf.

Step 10

Browse the InTouch Hub

The InTouch Hub hosts example skills and jobs you can install with one click. Browse from the sidebar (Skills view or Hub browser) or visit hub.blueisle.com directly.

The items are example starting points — provided as-is for you to install, read, and adapt to your setup. They're not productized templates that will work out of the box for everyone. Read each one's README before running.

For ideas grouped by use case, see the Examples by vertical on the home page.

Step 11

Got stuck?

This is friends-and-family beta — your feedback is the entire point of this release. If anything breaks, anything confuses, or anything could be better:

Tell us what you were trying to do and what happened. Screenshots help. We'll be in touch.

Welcome to the beta

The platform is production-grade. The hub content is illustrative. Everything else is between you and your laptop.

Download the zip See example automations