Skip to content
Axern

Quick Start

Run a complete Axern stack on your machine without cloning the repository or installing Go, Node.js, Helm, kubectl, Make, or OpenSSL.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • macOS or Linux on amd64 or arm64
  • Docker Desktop, or Docker Engine with Compose v2
  • At least 4 CPU cores, 8 GiB of memory, and 20 GiB of free disk space

1. Install the CLI

Section titled “1. Install the CLI”
Terminal window
brew install cofy-x/tap/axern

If you do not use Homebrew:

Terminal window
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cofy-x/axern/main/install.sh | sh

The installer downloads a GitHub Release archive, verifies it against checksums.txt, and installs into a user-writable directory. Set AXERN_VERSION or AXERN_INSTALL_DIR to override its defaults.

2. Start Local Axern

Section titled “2. Start Local Axern”
Terminal window
axern local up

The command checks Docker and host resources, starts only the core services, waits until the gateway and runtime are healthy, and creates the local context. Host Docker images are not implicitly shared with the node; load the image used by the first workload:

Terminal window
axern local image load python:3.12-slim --pull

3. Run a command

Section titled “3. Run a command”
Terminal window
axern run python:3.12-slim -- python -c 'print("hello from axern")'

Axern streams the command’s stdout and stderr to your terminal. The CLI exits with the command’s real exit code. Every execution also creates a durable Run record that you can inspect later:

Terminal window
axern run list
axern run logs <run-id>

Run status is durable. stdout/stderr and explicitly declared files or directory-as-tar outputs are sealed on the Node before runtime cleanup and remain readable for 15 minutes after cleanup starts. They survive axnoded restart, not Node-disk loss, and callers must copy accepted bytes to their own durable store. Axern does not provide a persistent workspace or general object store.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”