Quick Start (Template)

Prerequisites

Install a current stable Rust toolchain and cargo-generate before creating a project:

cargo install cargo-generate --locked

The web development scripts also require frontend-specific tools:

• React: wasm-pack and Bun
• Leptos: Trunk plus the Rust WASM target: rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
• Postgres selection: Docker, because the React and Leptos scripts run a local database container

The generated scripts check their primary executables and print a missing-tool message. Install the Leptos WASM target explicitly; its script otherwise reports only that the Trunk preflight build failed.

Generate the project

Generate a new Ankurah app with cargo-generate, choosing the frontend that matches your application:

• Leptos — cargo generate https://github.com/ankurah/leptos-template
• React — cargo generate https://github.com/ankurah/react-template
• React Native — currently blocked at generation; see the note below

The React and Leptos templates generate working chat applications with shared Rust models, a durable server, a local client store, and live synchronization. Their client bindings and development tools differ:

React Native template status: as of July 2026, cargo-generate 0.23.12 against template main (f3c43b5) tries to substitute template text inside the binary iOS notification.caf asset and cargo generate https://github.com/ankurah/react-native-template exits with an invalid-syntax error. The asset is missing from the binary exclusions in the template’s cargo-generate.toml. The iOS steps below describe the intended generated project, but are not a working from-scratch quick start until that upstream template bug is fixed; follow react-native-template#10.

Choose the durable server’s storage engine at generation time: Sled (embedded, the default) or Postgres. Add --define storage=postgres to the generation command. The React and Leptos development runners manage a local Postgres container; a React Native server configured for Postgres reads DATABASE_URL and expects you to provide the database.

Run it

Leptos / React (web):

cd your-project-name
./dev.sh

dev.sh builds the server and frontend and starts them on randomized local ports — open the URL it prints. Stop with ./dev.sh --stop (--status, --logs, and --restart are also available).

React Native (iOS) — the current script requires macOS, Xcode 16.1+, Node 20+, Ruby/Bundler with CocoaPods, the Rust iOS targets, and an installed iPhone 16 simulator. Install the generated app’s dependencies first:

rustup target add aarch64-apple-ios-sim aarch64-apple-ios
cd react-app
npm install
bundle install
cd ios
bundle exec pod install
cd ../..

Then start the server and app in separate terminals:

cd your-project-name
cargo run -p your-project-name-server   # start the server (ws://localhost:9898)
./dev.sh                                # build the bindings + launch the iOS app

To see real-time synchronization in action, run the app as two independent nodes. On the web, open one regular browser tab and one incognito tab — the incognito tab gets its own IndexedDB store, so the two behave as separate nodes syncing through your server. The React Native dev.sh currently launches one fixed simulator target; a second client requires a separately configured simulator or device rather than another invocation of the documented script.

Need help? Join the Ankurah Discord!

Next Steps

• A Synchronized Feature, End to End – follow one model from Rust definition through replication and a reactive UI
• Defining Models – describe your data
• Querying Data – fetch and live-query it
• Run the Repository Examples – inspect the minimal examples in the Ankurah source tree