Getting Started

systemprompt.io is an embedded Rust library for building production AI infrastructure. Clone the template, wrap your logic around it, and the CLI handles the rest.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.75+ — Install from rustup.rs
• Git — For cloning repositories
• PostgreSQL — The only external dependency

rustc --version    # Should output 1.75.0 or higher

Quick Start

1. Clone the Template

gh repo create my-ai --template systempromptio/systemprompt-template --clone --private
cd my-ai
git submodule update --init --recursive

2. Build

SQLX_OFFLINE=true cargo build --release -p systemprompt-cli

3. Setup Profile

systemprompt cloud auth login
systemprompt cloud tenant create --type local
systemprompt cloud profile create local
systemprompt infra db migrate

4. Start Services

just start

Visit http://localhost:8080 to see your homepage.

Project Structure

systemprompt.io projects have three core directories:

Directory	Purpose	Contents
.systemprompt/	Credentials & cloud management	profiles, secrets, tenant config
services/	Config as code	agents, skills, content, web config
extensions/	Rust crates	custom code, API routes, MCP servers

.systemprompt/ — Credentials

Your personal credential store. Gitignored by default.

.systemprompt/
├── credentials.json     # Cloud API credentials
├── tenants.json         # Registry of tenants
└── profiles/
    └── local/
        ├── profile.yaml # Environment settings
        └── secrets.json # DATABASE_URL, API keys

services/ — Configuration

YAML and Markdown configuration. No Rust code here.

Directory	Purpose
services/agents/	AI agent definitions
services/mcp/	MCP server configs
services/skills/	Reusable skills
services/content/	Blog, docs (Markdown)
services/web/	Theme, navigation
services/playbook/	Operational playbooks

extensions/ — Rust Code

Custom Rust crates extending the core framework.

extensions/
├── web/     # Web extension (API routes, schemas, jobs)
├── cli/     # CLI extensions (custom commands)
└── mcp/     # MCP server extensions (tool servers)

See the Coding Standards documentation for patterns and requirements.

Playbooks

Everything is done through playbooks. Playbooks are machine-readable instruction sets.

# Required first read
systemprompt core playbooks show guide_start

# List all playbooks
systemprompt core playbooks list

# Read a specific playbook
systemprompt core playbooks show <playbook_id>

Task	Playbook
First read	guide_start
Coding standards	guide_coding-standards
CLI session	cli_session
Build extension	build_extension-checklist
Build MCP server	build_mcp-checklist

Next Steps

Goal	Documentation
Detailed installation	Installation
Write code	Coding Standards
Configure services	Configuration Overview
Build extensions	Extensions Overview
Deploy to cloud	Cloud Deployment

Verification

# Check service status
systemprompt infra services status

# Check database connection
systemprompt infra db status

# List available agents
systemprompt admin agents list