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Getting Started

Arrower is under active development. The core packages logging, jobs, repository, config, testing are in Beta and well-tested. Some features are still experimental. See the project status for details.

Prerequisites​

  • Go 1.25+
  • Docker (for Postgres and observability stack)
  • Node.js (for frontend assets)

Install the CLI​

go install github.com/go-arrower/arrower/...@latest

Verify the installation:

arrower version

Create Your App​

The CLI scaffolds a complete project: config, Postgres migrations, views, Docker Compose with observability, CI workflows, and more.

mkdir myapp && cd myapp
arrower init Myapp github.com/yourname/myapp

This creates:

myapp/
├── .config/           # Config files, hooks, linters
├── cmd/               # CLI commands
├── shared/
│   ├── domain/        # Your domain entities
│   ├── application/   # Your use cases
│   ├── interfaces/    # Controllers, repositories
│   ├── views/         # HTML templates
│   └── infrastructure/# Config, postgres, migrations
├── devops/            # Docker Compose, Grafana, Prometheus, Tempo
├── public/            # Static assets
├── tests/             # E2E tests (Cypress)
├── main.go
├── Makefile
└── go.mod

Run It​

make dev-tools   # install migrate CLI, linters, dev dependencies
arrower run

Your app is running at http://localhost:8080.

Behind the scenes arrower run starts Docker containers (Postgres, Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, Tempo) and launches your app with hot reload. Edit a .go file - the app restarts. Edit CSS or JS - the browser reloads.

What You Got​

Out of the box your app comes with:

  • Config - configuration using Viper, with sane defaults, file-based and environment-based values
  • Postgres - connection pool, migrations ready to run
  • Logging - structured logging with slog, JSON in production, dev-friendly output locally
  • Observability - Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, Tempo pre-configured in Docker Compose
  • Admin dashboard - job queues and application management at /admin
  • Hot reload - backend restarts on Go changes, frontend reloads on asset changes
  • CI - GitHub Actions workflow included (if using github.com import path)

Where to Go Next​

Explore the features you'll use in every project:

  • Jobs - background processing with transactional enqueuing, scheduling, and retries
  • Repository - generic repository pattern with in-memory and Postgres implementations
  • Logging - structured logging with runtime configuration
  • Testing - integration test helpers and semantic assertions
  • Config - extend Arrower's config for your application