Installing tzk

tzk itself

On most systems, tzk may be installed directly from pip at a command line:

$ pip install tzk

If you don’t have Python 3.6 or greater on your computer, you’ll need to install it first. If you aren’t sure how to do that, here’s an exhaustive guide to installing Python on all major operating systems. Once you’ve gotten Python installed, you’ll be able to use pip to install tzk as described above.

To check your work, run tzk --version; you should see a version number rather than an error, something like:

$ tzk --version
1.0.0

Dependencies

In order to set up your Zettelkasten, you’ll also need npm and git. You can check if they’re installed like this:

$ npm --version
7.20.6
$ git --version
git version 2.32.0

Your versions will likely be a little different by the time you read this. As long as you get a version number rather than an error, you’re good; tzk does not use any features of either tool that require bleeding-edge versions.

If you don’t have NPM, follow step 1 of the Node.js installation instructions in the TiddlyWiki documentation. You can skip all the remaining steps – tzk takes care of that part for you.

If you don’t have Git, follow the steps in the Installing Git section of Pro Git.

Checking your work

Run tzk preflight to double-check that everything is correctly installed.