Quickstart

Build and run your first Acme pipeline in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

• Acme CLI installed (Installation Guide)
• A running PostgreSQL database (or use our demo database)

Step 1: Create a new project

mkdir my-first-pipeline && cd my-first-pipeline
acme init

This creates the following structure:

my-first-pipeline/
├── acme.yml        # Pipeline configuration
├── .env                # Environment variables
└── transforms/         # Custom transform functions
    └── .gitkeep

Step 2: Define your pipeline

Edit acme.yml:

name: hello-world
version: "1.0"

sources:
  - type: csv
    name: sample_data
    path: ./data/users.csv

transforms:
  - type: filter
    condition: "age >= 18"
  - type: rename
    columns:
      email_address: email
      full_name: name

destinations:
  - type: json
    path: ./output/filtered_users.json
    pretty: true

Step 3: Add sample data

Create data/users.csv:

full_name,email_address,age,country
Alice Johnson,alice@example.com,28,US
Bob Smith,bob@example.com,16,UK
Carol White,carol@example.com,34,CA
David Brown,david@example.com,12,AU
Eva Martinez,eva@example.com,45,MX

Step 4: Run the pipeline

acme run

You should see output like:

✓ Loaded pipeline: hello-world v1.0
✓ Source: sample_data (5 rows)
✓ Transform: filter (3 rows passed)
✓ Transform: rename (3 columns mapped)
✓ Destination: filtered_users.json (3 rows written)

Pipeline completed in 0.3s

Step 5: Check the output

[
  {
    "name": "Alice Johnson",
    "email": "alice@example.com",
    "age": 28,
    "country": "US"
  },
  {
    "name": "Carol White",
    "email": "carol@example.com",
    "age": 34,
    "country": "CA"
  },
  {
    "name": "Eva Martinez",
    "email": "eva@example.com",
    "age": 45,
    "country": "MX"
  }
]

What's next?

• Project Structure — understand the files in a Acme project
• Your First Pipeline — a more detailed walkthrough with a real database
• Pipelines — learn how pipelines work under the hood