Installation

What you need

  • Python 3.11 or newer. The library is tested on 3.11, 3.12, 3.13 and 3.14.

  • Linux, macOS or Windows. The two OpenPGP engines (pysequoia and rpgp-py) come as prebuilt wheels for these systems, so you don’t need a compiler.

  • A PGP Chat bot and its token. You make the bot in the app: Settings → Account → My bots, or write to @bot.

Install

pip install PGPCbot

It is a good idea to use a virtual environment:

python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate          # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install PGPCbot

Optional extras

Extra

Adds

When you need it

PGPCbot[webhook]

uvicorn

to serve a webhook without another web framework

PGPCbot[http2]

HTTP/2 support for httpx2

only if your server or proxy needs HTTP/2

 
pip install "PGPCbot[webhook]"

FastAPI and Starlette are not dependencies: install them yourself if you use them.

From the source code

From the project folder:

pip install .          # a normal install
pip install -e .       # an editable install, to work on the library

Check that it works

python -c "import pgpcbot; print(pgpcbot.__version__)"
pgpcbot --version

With a token in PGPCHAT_BOT_TOKEN, this asks the server who the bot is:

pgpcbot whoami

What gets installed

Package

Why

License

httpx2

HTTP client, sync and async

BSD-3-Clause

pysequoia

OpenPGP: encrypts and decrypts messages (Sequoia PGP)

Apache-2.0, with Sequoia under LGPL-2.0-or-later

rpgp-py

OpenPGP: makes keys and checks signatures (rPGP)

MIT

The research page explains why these were chosen.

Problems

pip tries to compile Rust code. There is no prebuilt wheel for your platform or your Python version (for example a very new Python, or an unusual CPU). Use a Python version from the list above, or install a Rust toolchain so pip can build the wheel.

SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED. httpx2 uses your operating system’s certificate store. In a minimal container, install the CA certificates (ca-certificates on Debian and Alpine), or point SSL_CERT_FILE to a certificate bundle.

pgpcbot: command not found. The virtual environment is not active, or its bin (or Scripts on Windows) folder is not on your PATH. python -m pgpcbot works too.