ARETE

Assistant for Realtime Ethical Thought and Evaluation

Mindful and honest AI.
Transparent, private, easy to run yourself — under your rules.

• Try the demo: https://arete-web.fly.dev
• Setup (self-host): https://arete-web.fly.dev/invite
• API spec: openapi.yaml

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What is ARETE?

ARETE is an AI assistant that tries to show its work.

Most assistants give you polished answers but hide the trail. ARETE is built around structured provenance: its responses carry trace metadata you can easily inspect.

With every response ARETE surfaces:

• what it concluded, and how confident it is
• what sources it relied on
• what trade-offs it considered
• what constraints and safety checks were applied
• a trace artifact suitable for review or audit

ARETE doesn't try to earn your trust — it’s built for human oversight, with inspectable provenance instead of “just believe me.”

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What you can try today

ARETE is a working prototype delivering these core features:

• Response traces (artifacts + metadata) stored for later inspection
• Risk tiering and citations
• Web demo with a quick “ask” flow with provenance data
• Discord bot provides provenance as first-class while preserving useability
• Self-hosting via Docker (recommended for easiest setup), or to the cloud via Fly

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Architecture at a glance

ARETE is three small services that work together:

• Discord bot
  Conversational interface in Discord (chat, images, voice)

• Web interface
  Public-facing site with a quick chat demo and trace viewer.

• Backend API
  Central brains: handles traces, configuration, rate limits, etc. OpenAI is currently the only LLM provider. A provider pipeline (cloud + local) is planned.

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Getting Started

Option A: Docker (recommended)

For the minimum DIY experience, run via Docker and open the web UI.

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/arete-org/arete.git && cd arete

2. Create a config file

cp .env.example .env

3. Start via Docker / Compose (See deploy/ for the current compose topology and commands)

4. Open the web UI (the default URL is typically http://localhost:5173)

Option B: Local dev (pnpm)

1. Install dependencies

pnpm install

If pnpm isn't available yet, run corepack enable once (Node 16.10+), then re-run pnpm install.

3. Configure environment variables

cp .env.example .env

At minimum:

DISCORD_TOKEN=...
DISCORD_CLIENT_ID=...
DISCORD_GUILD_ID=...
DISCORD_USER_ID=...
OPENAI_API_KEY=...
TRACE_API_TOKEN=...
INCIDENT_PSEUDONYMIZATION_SECRET=...

See .env.example for the full list and descriptions of optional settings.

3. Run the services Start the backend and web interface:

pnpm start:dev

In another terminal, start the Discord bot (optional):

pnpm start:bot

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License

ARETE is dual-licensed under MIT and the Hippocratic License v3 (HL3-CORE).

See our license strategy for details.

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Contributing

Contribution guidelines are still being drafted.

For now, thoughtful discussion, critique, and experimentation are welcome via Discussions and Issues on this repo.