Getting Started

A quick-start guide to running Merlon with the least effort.

Prerequisites

• Docker 24+
• Docker Compose v2+
• git

You do not need Go, Rust, or Node.js installed locally — the minimal setup runs entirely in containers.

Steps

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ksuk/merlon.git
cd merlon

# 2. Prepare the environment file
cp .env.example .env

# 3. Start the minimal topology (API + PostgreSQL; the Engine is not part of
#    this profile — use docker-compose.yml for the full topology)
docker compose -f docker-compose.minimal.yml up --build

# 4. Health check (in another terminal)
curl localhost:8080/healthz

A response body containing "status":"ok" means the API started successfully.

Next steps

• Architecture overview — understand the overall system layout
• Configuration reference — tune environment variables and config.yaml
• Development environment setup — for developers who will edit code
• Testing guide — how to run the test suites