Prerequisites

Clanker depends on external CLI tools to interact with cloud providers and container orchestration platforms. This page lists all required and optional dependencies.

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Build Requirements

These are required to build Clanker from source:

Tool	Required	Used For	Install
Go 1.21+	Yes	Building the Clanker binary	golang.org/dl

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Runtime Dependencies

Required

Tool	Required	Used For	Install
AWS CLI v2	Yes	All AWS operations. Clanker uses --no-cli-pager, which is not available in v1.	AWS CLI v2 install guide

AWS CLI v2 is the only tool that is strictly required at runtime. All other tools below are needed only if you use the corresponding cloud provider or feature.

Optional (per provider)

Tool	Required	Used For	Install
Terraform	No	clanker ask --terraform and clanker terraform commands	terraform.io/downloads
gh (GitHub CLI)	No	GitHub Models AI provider (github-models), token resolution, and clanker github commands	cli.github.com
gcloud	No	GCP queries (clanker ask --gcp), gemini provider via Application Default Credentials	cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install
az (Azure CLI)	No	Azure queries (clanker ask --azure) and Azure maker plans	learn.microsoft.com/cli/azure/install
doctl	No	DigitalOcean queries (clanker ask --digitalocean) and maker plans	docs.digitalocean.com/reference/doctl
hcloud	No	Hetzner Cloud queries (clanker ask --hetzner) and maker plans	github.com/hetznercloud/cli
kubectl	No	Kubernetes queries (clanker k8s ask) and plan execution	kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools
helm	No	Kubernetes Helm chart operations via K8s plans	helm.sh/docs/intro/install
eksctl	No	EKS cluster provisioning via K8s maker plans	eksctl.io/installation
docker	No	Container image operations in DigitalOcean registry push workflows	docs.docker.com/get-docker

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Verifying Your Setup

After installing the required tools, verify that they are available on your PATH:

# Required
aws --version          # Must be v2.x

# Optional (check whichever you plan to use)
terraform --version
gh --version
gcloud --version
az --version
doctl version
hcloud version
kubectl version --client
helm version
eksctl version
docker --version

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AWS CLI Configuration

Clanker uses AWS CLI profiles for authentication rather than raw access keys in its own config. To set up a profile:

# Configure a named profile
aws configure --profile my-dev-profile

# For SSO-based authentication
aws configure sso --profile my-dev-profile

# Verify the profile works
aws sts get-caller-identity --profile my-dev-profile

Then reference the profile in ~/.clanker.yaml:

infra:
  default_environment: dev
  aws:
    environments:
      dev:
        profile: my-dev-profile
        region: us-east-1

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GCP Authentication

If using GCP queries or the gemini AI provider (Vertex AI), authenticate with Application Default Credentials:

gcloud auth login
gcloud auth application-default login
gcloud config set project your-project-id

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Azure Authentication

If using Azure queries, sign in with the Azure CLI:

az login
az account set --subscription your-subscription-id

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GitHub CLI Authentication

If using the github-models AI provider or GitHub repository queries:

gh auth login