Getting Started

This guide walks you through creating your first arrow project and running a simple pipeline. By the end, you'll have a working development workflow defined as code.

1. Create a Project

Use arrow init to scaffold a new project with a default configuration:

This creates a minimal project structure with an arrow.yaml config file, a src/ directory for your code, and a pipelines/ directory for reusable pipeline files.

2. Define a Pipeline

Open arrow.yaml in your editor. It starts with a default pipeline. Let's customize it:

version: "1"

project:
  name: my-app
  language: node

pipelines:
  build:
    steps:
      - name: install
        run: npm install
      - name: lint
        run: npm run lint
        needs: [install]
      - name: test
        run: npm run test
        needs: [install]
      - name: build
        run: npm run build
        needs: [lint, test]

Each step has a name, a run command, and optional needs dependencies. Steps without needs run in parallel.

3. Run the Pipeline

Now run the build pipeline:

Notice that lint and test ran in parallel - they both depend on install but not on each other. arrow resolves the dependency graph automatically.

4. Re-run with Caching

Run the pipeline again without changing any files:

arrow caches the output of every step based on file content hashes. When nothing changed, the pipeline completes in milliseconds.

5. What's Next?

• Explore all commands and their options
• Check out real-world examples
• Read the configuration reference