Quick Start

This guide walks you through creating a new project with locraft and spinning up your first services.

1. Initialize a project

cd ~/my-app
locraft init

locraft will ask which services you need. Pick a few — for example Postgres and Redis.

2. Start services

locraft up

That’s it. locraft creates a managed Docker Compose stack and starts the containers.

3. Check status

locraft status

SERVICE    STATUS   PORT
postgres   running  5432
redis      running  6379

4. Connect your app

locraft prints connection strings you can drop straight into your app’s .env:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://locraft:locraft@localhost:5432/myapp
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379

5. Stop when done

locraft down

Containers stop but data volumes persist, so your data is safe for next time.

What’s next?

• Explore the Dashboard — run locraft dashboard to open the local web UI.
• Check the Introduction for an overview of all features.