> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.blastproject.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Quickstart

> Get started with BLAST in a minute.

## Install

```bash theme={null}
pip install blastai
```

## Get an OpenAI API Key

```bash theme={null}
echo "OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-..." > .env
```

## Start the Server

```bash theme={null}
blastai serve
```

## Try the UI

Open `http://localhost:3000` in your browser and try asking BLAST something totally normal like `compare the weight of the 10 heaviest gorillas and the 10 heaviest bench presses and squats ever`.

<img src="https://mintcdn.com/blast-d20608ad/Xmjz7YcsheJ6ZwFW/assets/blast_ui_gif.gif?s=54af21711229a6996b607f3fea39183b" alt="BLAST in action" width="791" height="450" data-path="assets/blast_ui_gif.gif" />

This frontend is a lightweight Next.js app that is simply calling the OpenAI Node.js API and reading the returned stream for screenshots and text results.

## Use the API

BLAST provides an OpenAI-compatible API. Here's a simple example using the Python OpenAI client:

```python theme={null}
from openai import OpenAI

# Initialize client pointing to local BLAST server
client = OpenAI(
    api_key="not-needed",
    base_url="http://127.0.0.1:8000"
)

# Create a streaming response
stream = client.responses.create(
    model="not-needed",
    input="Compare the r/protectandserve and r/securityguard subreddits",
    stream=True
)

# Process the stream
for event in stream:
    if event.type == "response.output_text.delta":
        # Print real-time thoughts/actions
        if ' ' in event.delta:  # Skip screenshots
            print(event.delta, end='', flush=True)
```

## Next Steps

* Learn about the [OpenAI-Compatible API](/guides/openai-compatible-api)
* Understand [Concurrency](/guides/concurrency), [Caching](/guides/caching), [Parallelism](/guides/parallelism)
* Configure [Settings](/guides/settings) and [Constraints](/guides/constraints)
* Check out our [Roadmap](/development/roadmap)