Inventory

What NikOS installs

Twelve roles run on every install. Fifteen more are opt-in, and nothing in them is downloaded unless you ask. Every item below maps to a role you can read in the repository.

Core roles

These run on every install.

Role	What it installs
`base`	nala, git, curl, wget, build-essential, python3-pip, python3-venv, flatpak, gnupg, ca-certificates, dialog, xfconf, inkscape, openssh-server, tmux, pipx, sqlite3, unzip. Sets timezone, locale and NTP, adds the Flathub remote, deploys a default `.tmux.conf`.
`desktop`	The Xubuntu desktop package set, LightDM and its GTK greeter. Detects an existing GNOME install, hands `display-manager.service` to LightDM, and sets the account's default session.
`theming`	Nord GTK theme and icons, a generated wallpaper, GRUB theme, Plymouth boot splash (GPL-3.0-or-later, derived from Xubuntu's theme), an autostart entry that applies the wallpaper across every connected monitor, and dark Firefox, Chromium and Google Chrome in the desktop colour (existing profiles only).
`github-setup`	GitHub CLI from GitHub's apt repository, plus the first-run wizard for auth, SSH keys and git identity.
`ai-stack`	Ollama as a user service, the default model, Miniforge, the `nikos-ai` conda environment, PyTorch (CPU), and llama.cpp binaries.
`editors`	VS Code from Microsoft's apt repository, plus the extension set.
`cloud-ai-cli`	Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, shell-gpt and glances via pipx. Provides the Node the npm-only CLIs run on: the system one when it is new enough, otherwise a pinned Node under your home through nvm.
`agent-dev`	The agent frameworks, ML libraries and image analysis stack in the conda environment, plus Claude Code.
`dev-tools`	distrodeck, image-view, git-lantern, ai-runner and mkcert, cloned into `~/.local/share/nikos-tools` and built.
`network`	Network tooling; adds you to the `wireshark` group. Tagged `network`.
`music`	Music production tools and Ardour via Flatpak. Tagged `music`.
`education`	Education tools and draw.io desktop via Flatpak. Tagged `education`.

Optional bundles

Installed with nikos add <name>, or selected from the installer menu.

Bundle	Contents
`neovim`	Neovim with a minimal `init.lua`
`java`	OpenJDK 21 (LTS) by default; `nikos_java_versions` adds 17 or 25
`bun`	The Bun JavaScript runtime
`zsh`	Zsh with the Starship prompt
`podman`	Rootless container runtime
`redis`	Redis server and the Python client
`postgres`	PostgreSQL with pgvector and `psycopg2-binary`
`mongodb`	MongoDB Community 8.2 on 127.0.0.1:27017, `mongosh`, the Atlas CLI and `pymongo`
`qdrant`	Qdrant vector database as a user systemd service on port 6333
`k8s-tools`	kubectl and Helm
`act`	Run GitHub Actions workflows locally
`fabric`	The Fabric AI pattern CLI
`jev`	Jev client: the official TypeSafe SDK, hash-pinned, and a `jev` command. Bring your own API key (`jev login`).
`bitnet`	BitNet.cpp 1-bit inference, built from source. Provides `bitnet-cli`.
`mistral-rs`	mistral.rs, a Rust OpenAI-compatible LLM server
`monitoring`	Netdata metrics dashboard
`openclaw`	The OpenClaw LLM gateway CLI

The Python AI environment

A conda environment named nikos-ai, built on Miniforge. Python is a range (>=3.11,<3.14) rather than a fixed minor, so conda resolves whatever actually solves against the package set.

Group	Packages
Deep learning	`torch`, `torchvision`, `torchaudio` (CPU builds), `transformers`, `accelerate`
Agent frameworks	`langchain`, `langchain-community`, `langchain-openai`, `llama-index`, `llama-index-llms-ollama`, `openai`, `anthropic`, `instructor`
Retrieval	`sentence-transformers`, `chromadb`, `qdrant-client`, `datasets`, `evaluate`
Image analysis	`opencv-contrib-python`, `pillow`, `scikit-image`, `imageio`, `pytesseract`, `timm`
Data and notebooks	`jupyter`, `jupyterlab`, `pandas`, `numpy`, `scikit-learn`, `matplotlib`, `litecli`
Serving	`fastapi`, `uvicorn`, `httpx`

OpenCV's wheels are dynamically linked, so libgl1, libglib2.0-0t64, libsm6, libxext6 and ffmpeg are installed alongside them. Tesseract arrives with orientation detection and nine language packs by default; set nikos_tesseract_languages: ["all"] for all 160-plus.

Tesseract reads text, it does not translate it. It performs OCR — extracting characters from an image. Translating what it extracts is a separate step, and one of the local language models can do it.

Ollama models

Models come in modules, and each module pulls one model per role: the one this machine can run. The model per role and class of machine is the fleet's approved set, in ai-models.env. The default module is always pulled; the others with nikos add ollama-text, -reasoning, -coding, -vision, -embedding, or ollama-models for every role.

Download size per module, by class of machine (fleet registry sizes). One model per role, so a module costs what this machine runs, not every model. Models load on demand: this is disk and bandwidth, not idle RAM.

Module	Role	small	standard	large	xlarge
default, text	general	`qwen3.5:2b`	`qwen3.5:4b`	`qwen3.5:9b`	`qwen3.5:9b`
text	creative	`qwen3.5:4b`	`gemma4:latest`	`gemma4:latest`	`gemma4:latest`
text	extract	`qwen3.5:2b`	`qwen3.5:4b`	`qwen3.5:9b`	`qwen3.5:9b`
text	classify	`qwen3:1.7b`	`qwen3:1.7b`	`qwen3:1.7b`	`qwen3:1.7b`
reasoning	reasoning	`qwen3.5:4b`	`qwen3:8b`	`qwen3:8b`	`gpt-oss:20b`
coding	code	`qwen3.5:4b`	`qwen2.5-coder:7b`	`qwen2.5-coder:7b`	`qwen3-coder:30b`
vision	vision	`qwen3-vl:4b`	`qwen3-vl:4b`	`qwen3-vl:8b`	`qwen3-vl:8b`
embedding	embed	`nomic-embed-text`	`nomic-embed-text`	`nomic-embed-text`	`nomic-embed-text`

The class is measured: small has less than 11 GiB of memory and of GPU memory; large has a GPU with 11 GiB or 30 GiB of memory; xlarge has a GPU with 15 GiB (reasoning) or 23 GiB (code); standard is the rest. Disk and memory are checked before each pull, and a model that does not fit falls back one class. nikos_ai_model_tier names the class instead; nikos models shows it.

nikos update pulls the default and the selected modules, and first offers to remove installed models that are not approved for this machine, one question per model. Without a terminal it lists them and removes nothing. nikos add model <name> installs any other model, and updates keep it.

VS Code extensions

Continue, GitHub Copilot, Leak Lock, GitLens, Python, Jupyter, the Nord theme, Remote SSH, Docker and REST Client. Edit nikos_vscode_extensions to change the set.

The `nikos` command

nikos setup            # run the full playbook
nikos update           # move to the newest release, then re-run
nikos update --ref X   # update to a specific branch or tag
nikos add <name>       # install an optional bundle or model group
nikos status           # version, Ollama models, installed roles
nikos doctor           # check for broken configs and missing deps
nikos clean [--apply]  # free disk from unused caches; never volumes
nikos log [N]          # tail the latest playbook log
nikos log list         # list available logs

Installation guide Read the roles