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Installation

This page shows different ways to install deet across platforms and use-cases

Basic setup and dependencies

Accessing the terminal

Press the windows key, type "powershell", and press enter. This is your command line.

If you a mac user, open the terminal from Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.

If you are Linux user, press Ctrl + Shift + t

If you are using an IDE, like VS Code or PyCharm, you can also open the integrated terminal.

Installing a package manager

A package manager is a tool that makes it easier to install other command line tools. You could use either scoop or cholatey.

We recommend scoop, as it does not require admin privileges to install packages. If you prefer chocolatey, replace scoop install X with choco install X in the following commands.

Mac/linux systems come with package managers included. For mac users, this is brew, for (Debian) linux users, this is apt.

Installing pandoc

If you want to use deet with full-texts pdfs, as opposed to abstracts, or pre-processed markdown files, you will need to have installed pandoc, a widespread open source file/document conversion utility.

scoop install pandoc
Manual Pandoc installation

Manual pandoc installation

If, for any reason, pandoc installation did not work as expected, you can attempt to install pandoc manually. Follow these instructions to do so and check whether installation was successful.

1. Installation

There are multiple options. The first and possibly best one is using an installer file provided via GitHub. For the most recent release, visit:

Select the .msi file from the latest release (e.g. pandoc-3.8.3-windows-x86_64.msi for release 3.8.3, as of January 2026) and run the installer by double-clicking on it.

Alternatively, one may download the ZIP file from the link above, unpack it, and move the binaries to a directory of your choice (not tested; more information is available via the link below).

For other options (Chocolatey or Winget package manager, or Conda Forge), see:

Note: Using the .msi method should remove older versions of Pandoc and update PATH variables automatically, while other methods may cause multiple versions to be installed.

2. Verifying that Pandoc works

These instructions are taken from:

Steps
  1. Search for cmd in the Windows Start menu to launch Command Prompt. It should also be possible to use Windows PowerShell.
  2. If you are using cmd, type the following before using Pandoc to set the encoding to UTF-8:
chcp 65001
  1. Type the following and press Enter to check if Pandoc is installed:
pandoc --version

It should say something like:

pandoc 3.8.3 Features: +server +lua Scripting engine: Lua 5.4 User data directory: C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\pandoc Copyright (C) 2006-2025 John MacFarlane. Web: https://pandoc.org

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is no warranty, not even for merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

  1. Navigate to a directory of your choice using the cd command. See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17753986/how-to-change-directory-using-windows-command-line (This link is useful if you need to switch to a different drive.)

  2. Create a new directory to test Pandoc:

mkdir pandoc-test

  1. Navigate into the new directory:

    ```batch

cd pandoc-test 

It should now show `pandoc-test` before the blinking cursor in the command prompt.
If the directory is not shown, run:

    ```batch
echo %cd%

  1. Outside the command prompt (using Notepad, for example), create a file called test1.md in your pandoc-test directory. If Windows is hiding file extensions then please make sure that the displayed file name corresponds to the actual file name, and that no hidden '.txt' extension is added. Paste the following text into your file, then save the file.
---

title: Test
...

# Test!

This is a test of *pandoc*.

- list one
- list two

  1. Back in the command prompt (still in the pandoc-test directory), type dir and press Enter. You should see test1.md listed.

  2. Convert the file to HTML by typing:

pandoc test1.md -f markdown -t html -s -o test1.html

Info: - test1.md tells Pandoc which file to convert. - -s creates a standalone file with a header and footer. - -o test1.html specifies the output file name.

Note that -f markdown and -t html could be omitted, since the default is to convert from Markdown to HTML.

  1. Type the following to open the HTML file in your browser:

    .\test1.html

    Alternatively, open the folder in File Explorer and double-click test1.html.

3. Completion

If the HTML file opens and displays well then you have successfully installed Pandoc and converted a Markdown file to HTML.

brew install pandoc

sudo apt install pandoc

Installing a python package manager

We recommend installing uv to manage python packages. This can also be used to install deet as a standalone cli app.

In windows, the easiest way to do install uv is using your package manager. 

scoop install uv

In Mac/Linux, we recommend you install uv using the standalone installer

Now you have the basics set up, continue to CLI users if you want to use the CLI, or package users if you want to use deet as a package, or to contributors if you want to contribute to deet.

CLI users

If you just want to use the CLI, we recommend you install the package globally into an isolated managed environment. You can do this using uv tool install <package>.

To install deet

uv tool install git+https://github.com/destiny-evidence/data-extraction-evaluation-toolkit.git

Now you are ready to use deet. To test this, run

deet --help

Installing from a specific branch

If a feature you want to use is being actively worked on, and is not yet merged into main, you can install a specific branch of deet by appending @branch to the previous command. For example

uv tool install git+https://github.com/destiny-evidence/data-extraction-evaluation-toolkit.git@development

will install deet from the development branch.

Package users

You can also use deet as a python package, within another project.

Assuming you are using UV to manage dependencies within your project, you can add deet via

uv add git+https://github.com/destiny-evidence/data-extraction-evaluation-toolkit.git
uv sync

Append @branch to the uv add command to use a specific branch of deet.

Contributors

If you want to contribute to deet, you will want to clone the repository.

git clone git@github.com:destiny-evidence/data-extraction-evaluation-toolkit.git # SSH
# or
git clone https://github.com/destiny-evidence/data-extraction-evaluation-toolkit.git # HTTPS
cd data-extraction-evaluation-toolkit

Use uv sync to install dependencies (you may need to re-run this if you switch to another branch)

uv sync

Activate your virtual environment

source .venv/Scripts/activate

.venv/bin/activate

Installing pre-commit hooks

Before committing any changes, install pre-commit locally (in your activated venv). This will check any committed changes to aid code consistency.

pre-commit install

Settings and environment variables

deet reads general settings from a .env file within the directory you are running it from. Settings will be set to default values if this file does not exist, but if you want to use deet with azure models (default behaviour), you will need to provide a set of credentials.

To do this, open a file called .env in the directory you are running deet, and add the following lines, replacing the placeholders with your own credentials:

AZURE_API_KEY="your-azure-api-key-here"
AZURE_API_BASE=https://your-resource.openai.azure.com/