What are the installation requirements for SillyTavern?

Updated

SillyTavern's own hardware bar is low: it runs on anything that can run NodeJS 20 or higher. The heavier requirement is separate — if you want to run the language model itself on your own machine, the docs recommend a 3000-series NVIDIA graphics card with at least 6GB of VRAM. If you plan to connect to a cloud or remote backend instead, that GPU recommendation does not apply to SillyTavern itself.

SillyTavern's own requirements

According to the official documentation, the hardware requirements for SillyTavern are minimal. The stated baseline is:

  • NodeJS 20 or higher — this is the actual gate. If your device can run it, it can run SillyTavern.
  • No specific CPU, RAM, or GPU figure is given for the interface itself.

This matters because SillyTavern is described as a locally installed user interface, not an inference engine. It sits in front of text generation LLMs, image generation engines, and TTS voice models — the compute happens elsewhere, whether that's a local model server or a cloud API.

If you want to run the LLM locally

The docs give a separate recommendation for local inference: a 3000-series NVIDIA graphics card with at least 6GB of VRAM.

Read that as a starting recommendation, not a hard minimum enforced by SillyTavern. Two conditions are worth separating:

Scenario What you need
SillyTavern only, backend elsewhere Anything that runs NodeJS 20+
SillyTavern + local LLM inference 3000-series NVIDIA GPU, 6GB+ VRAM recommended

If your machine doesn't meet the GPU recommendation, you can still use SillyTavern — you'd just point it at a backend that isn't your own hardware.

Installation guides by platform

The documentation links platform-specific installation guides for:

  • Windows
  • Linux and Mac
  • Android
  • Docker

Before starting, confirm your device meets the NodeJS 20+ requirement. That's the one check the docs frame as the practical prerequisite.

Choosing a branch before you install

SillyTavern is developed on a two-branch system, and your choice affects stability:

  • release — recommended for most users. The most stable branch, updated only when major releases are pushed, typically about once a month.
  • staging — not recommended for casual use. Carries the latest features but may break at any time; intended for power users and enthusiasts, updated several times daily.

For a first install, release is the documented default.

What you still need after installing

SillyTavern is only an interface, so installation alone doesn't give you a working chat. You need access to an LLM backend to provide inference. Options named in the docs include:

  • AI Horde — for instant out-of-the-box chatting
  • OpenAI-compatible API
  • KoboldAI
  • Tabby
  • and other local and cloud-based backends

The docs point to an API Connections section for the full list. Separately, persistent conversations in SillyTavern are built around character cards — collections of prompts that set the LLM's behavior, roughly analogous to ChatGPT's GPTs or Poe's bots. A card can describe anything from an abstract scenario to a task-specific assistant or a fictional character.

So the practical sequence is: check NodeJS 20+, pick a platform guide, install the release branch, then decide whether your inference runs locally (where the GPU recommendation kicks in) or through a backend like AI Horde or an OpenAI-compatible API.