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Getting started with Spice.ai OSS

Follow these steps to get started with Spice.​

Download the latest version of Spice, connect to a dataset in S3, and ask questions about the data using AI, in less than 5 minutes.

Step 1. Install the Spice CLI:

curl https://install.spiceai.org | /bin/bash

Or using brew:

brew install spiceai/spiceai/spice

Step 2. Initialize a new Spice app with the spice init command:

spice init spice_qs

A spicepod.yaml file is created in the spice_qs directory. Change to that directory:

cd spice_qs

Step 3. Add the spiceai/quickstart Spicepod. A Spicepod is a package of configuration defining datasets and ML models.

spice add spiceai/quickstart

The spicepod.yaml file will be updated with the spiceai/quickstart dependency.

version: v1
kind: Spicepod
name: spice_qs
dependencies:
- spiceai/quickstart

Step 4. Add an OpenAI model to the Spicepod, with tools enabled to enable the model to access the data:

models:
- from: openai:gpt-4o-mini
name: openai_model
params:
openai_api_key: ${ env:OPENAI_API_KEY }
tools: auto

Add your OpenAI API key to a .env file that will be automatically loaded:

echo "OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-..." > .env

Start the Spice runtime:

spice run

Example output:

Spice.ai runtime starting...
2024-08-05T13:02:40.247484Z INFO runtime::flight: Spice Runtime Flight listening on 127.0.0.1:50051
2024-08-05T13:02:40.247490Z INFO runtime::metrics_server: Spice Runtime Metrics listening on 127.0.0.1:9090
2024-08-05T13:02:40.247949Z INFO runtime: Initialized results cache; max size: 128.00 MiB, item ttl: 1s
2024-08-05T13:02:40.248611Z INFO runtime::http: Spice Runtime HTTP listening on 127.0.0.1:8090
2024-08-05T13:02:40.252356Z INFO runtime::opentelemetry: Spice Runtime OpenTelemetry listening on 127.0.0.1:50052

Step 5. Start the Spice Chat REPL and ask a question:

$ spice chat
Using model: openai_model
chat> How many taxi trips were taken?
A total of 2,964,624 trips were taken according to the dataset.

The OpenAI model was automatically provided with the taxi_trips dataset and was able to answer the question.

Step 6. Start the Spice SQL REPL:

spice sql

The SQL REPL inferface will be shown:

Welcome to the Spice.ai SQL REPL! Type 'help' for help.

show tables; -- list available tables
sql>

Enter show tables; to display the available tables for query:

sql> show tables
+---------------+--------------+---------------+------------+
| table_catalog | table_schema | table_name | table_type |
+---------------+--------------+---------------+------------+
| spice | public | taxi_trips | BASE TABLE |
| spice | runtime | task_history | BASE TABLE |
| spice | runtime | metrics | BASE TABLE |
+---------------+--------------+---------------+------------+

Time: 0.022671708 seconds. 3 rows.

Enter a query to display the longest taxi trips:

sql> SELECT trip_distance, total_amount FROM taxi_trips ORDER BY trip_distance DESC LIMIT 10;

Output:

+---------------+--------------+
| trip_distance | total_amount |
+---------------+--------------+
| 312722.3 | 22.15 |
| 97793.92 | 36.31 |
| 82015.45 | 21.56 |
| 72975.97 | 20.04 |
| 71752.26 | 49.57 |
| 59282.45 | 33.52 |
| 59076.43 | 23.17 |
| 58298.51 | 18.63 |
| 51619.36 | 24.2 |
| 44018.64 | 52.43 |
+---------------+--------------+

Time: 0.045150667 seconds. 10 rows.

Next Steps​