Installation

All Candela components live in the candelahq/candela monorepo.

candela CLI (Recommended Start)

The fastest way to get started — a developer proxy that manages local and cloud models with built-in observability.

brew install candelahq/tap/candela

go install github.com/candelahq/candela/cmd/candela@latest

git clone https://github.com/candelahq/candela.git
cd candela
nix develop   # or ensure Go 1.26+ is installed
go run ./cmd/candela

Configure

Create ~/.config/candela/config.yaml:

runtime_backend: ollama
port: 8181
lm_studio_port: 1234

Authenticate

To use cloud models (Gemini, Claude via Vertex AI) or connect to a shared Candela server, authenticate once:

candela auth login     # opens browser — Google OAuth flow
candela auth status    # verify credentials

Credentials are stored at ~/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json (ADC-compatible). No gcloud CLI required.

AWS Authentication (Bedrock)

To use Anthropic models via AWS Bedrock, authenticate with your AWS credentials:

candela auth login --provider aws    # configures AWS credential chain
candela auth status                  # verify both GCP and AWS credentials

This configures the AWS credential chain for SigV4 signing. You can also set AWS_PROFILE, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID/AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, or use IAM roles — candela respects the standard AWS SDK credential resolution order.

candela-server

The full backend with dashboard UI, deployed on Cloud Run.

git clone https://github.com/candelahq/candela.git
cd candela
nix develop -c go run ./cmd/candela-server

See candela-server docs for Cloud Run deployment with Terraform.

candela-sidecar

Lightweight production proxy for container environments.

docker pull ghcr.io/candelahq/candela-sidecar:latest

go install github.com/candelahq/candela/cmd/candela-sidecar@latest

git clone https://github.com/candelahq/candela.git
cd candela
go build -o candela-sidecar ./cmd/candela-sidecar

candela-desktop

Desktop app for provider management and trace visualization.

Homebrew
Download

brew install --cask candelahq/tap/candela-desktop

Verify

candela version