Skip to content
CAPSEM

CAPSEM Installation Guide

Section titled “Setup a venv (recommended)”

While optinal, we recommend using a virtual environment as this will ensure that the dependencies for CAPSEM are isolated from the rest of your system.

Terminal window
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use `.venv\Scripts\activate`

Install CAPSEM from PyPI

Section titled “Install CAPSEM from PyPI”

The recommended way to install CAPSEM is to use a python package manager.

Terminal window
pip install capsem

Configuring environment variables

Section titled “Configuring environment variables”

CAPSEM uses environment variables to configure its behavior. You can set these variables in your shell or in a .env file. You can copy .env.example to .env and modify it as needed as starting point.

The available environment variables are:

  • GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_VERTEXAI = “TRUE” use VertexAI for Google GenAI models which is recommended. Set to “FALSE” to use the REST API.

  • GOOGLE_API_KEY = "" The Gemini API key or you can also use Application Default Credentials via gcloud auth application-default login

  • OPENAI_API_KEY = "" The OpenAI API key to use OpenAI models

  • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "" The Anthropic API key to use Claude models

  • VIRUS_TOTAL = "" The VirusTotal API key to use VirusTotal for URL and file scanning via the content policy.