Environment Setup

For AI agents: the documentation index is at llms.txt (full corpus: llms-full.txt). A markdown source for this page is /building-stacks/installation.md.

Set up your development environment for building Arete stacks.

Just want to use an existing stack?

If you’re consuming data from a deployed stack, see Using Stacks → Installation instead.

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Prerequisites

• Rust 1.70+ (install via rustup)
• A code editor with Rust support (VS Code + rust-analyzer recommended)

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CLI

The Arete CLI (a4) handles project initialization, deployment, and SDK generation.

cargo install a4-cli

Verify the installation:

a4 --version

PATH configuration

Ensure ~/.cargo/bin is in your PATH. Most Rust installations configure this automatically.

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Rust Dependencies

Add the Arete crate to your stack project’s Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
arete = "0.1.1"
serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] }

This gives you access to:

• #[arete] — The main macro for defining stacks
• #[entity], #[map], #[aggregate] — Field-level attributes
• Stream derive macro — Generates streaming infrastructure

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Project Initialization

Create a new stack project:

cargo new my-stack --lib
cd my-stack

Initialize Arete configuration:

a4 init

This creates arete.toml and a .arete/ directory for generated stack files.

arete.toml:

[project]
name = "my-stack"

[sdk]
output_dir = "./generated"

Validate your setup:

a4 config validate

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Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
ARETE_API_URL	Override API endpoint	Production API

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Next Steps

• Stack Definitions — Understand the declarative model
• Your First Stack — Build an end-to-end streaming app
• Macros Reference — Complete attribute documentation

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Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
a4: command not found	Add ~/.cargo/bin to your PATH
cargo build fails	Ensure arete = "0.1.1" is in Cargo.toml
a4 init fails	Check you’re in a valid Cargo project