Installation

Install the Spine CLI, create a new project, and check the development server's response. This guide uses Spine CLI 0.1.4 and the Spine v0.5.1 project it generates.

Requirements

• Go 1.25.5 or later is required. The CLI recommends Go 1.27.3.
• The directory where Go installs executables must be in PATH. If you have not set GOBIN, the default directory is $(go env GOPATH)/bin.

go version

Check that the reported Go version is 1.25.5 or later.

Install the CLI

Run the following commands to install the CLI and check its version.

go install github.com/NARUBROWN/spine-cli/cmd/spine@v0.1.4
spine version

Installation is complete when spine version prints spine-cli 0.1.4.

If the spine command cannot be found and you have not set GOBIN separately, run the following commands in Bash or Zsh to add the directory to the current session's path. To keep using it in future sessions, save the same setting in your shell startup file. If you have set GOBIN, add that directory instead.

export PATH="$(go env GOPATH)/bin:$PATH"
spine version

Create a New Project

Run these commands in the parent directory where you want to place the project. If a my-app directory already exists, use a different name.

spine new my-app --module example.com/my-app
cd my-app
go mod tidy

The project files are created in the my-app directory. The CLI specifies Spine v0.5.1 in go.mod, and go mod tidy downloads the required dependencies.

The generated spine.toml contains the following:

module = "example.com/my-app"
entrypoint = "."
composition = "./internal/application"
port = 8080

BuildApplication() in internal/application/application.go registers the components and GET /health. The generated main.go calls this function, validates the configuration with app.Validate(options), and starts the server with app.Run(options).

Validate and Run

spine doctor
spine inspect
spine contract check
spine verify

Check that each command completes without errors.

Command	What it checks
spine doctor	Go tools and project settings
spine inspect	App configuration registered in code, including routes and dependencies
spine contract check	Validity of the execution contract extracted from the registration code
spine verify	The execution contract and the results of gofmt, go vet, and Go tests

The generated application_test.go checks BuildApplication() and app.Validate(options) without starting the server. This step validates the code and app configuration. You will check the actual HTTP response in the next step.

Once the checks pass, run spine dev and check the actual HTTP response from another terminal.

spine dev

curl http://localhost:8080/health

If the server returns {"status":"ok"}, it has handled the request. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal running the server to stop it. After connecting an external database or message broker, or deploying the app, you must also check its behavior in that environment.

Next Steps

Follow Your First App to learn what the generated files do, or Project Structure to add a feature.