Question

How do I install Traverse?

Traverse is built from source. There are no binary releases yet. The process takes about 10 minutes if you already have Rust installed.

Prerequisites

  • Rust toolchain — install via rustup.rs if you do not have it
  • wasm32-wasi target — needed to compile capabilities to WASM
  • Node.js — only needed if you want to run the React demo

1 Add the WASM target

After installing Rust, add the WASM target:

rustup target add wasm32-wasi

2 Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/traverse-framework/traverse
cd traverse

3 Build the workspace

This builds all crates including the runtime, registry, CLI, and the expedition WASM capabilities:

cargo build

The first build will take a few minutes while Cargo downloads and compiles dependencies. Subsequent builds are much faster.

4 Verify with bundle inspect

Run the bundle inspect command to confirm everything built correctly. It prints the registry contents, showing all capabilities indexed from the bundle:

cargo run -p traverse-cli -- bundle inspect

You should see a list of capabilities from the expedition planning example, each with their contract metadata. If this runs without error, your installation is working.

What is installed where

Nothing is installed globally. All binaries live in target/debug/. The WASM capability modules are compiled to target/wasm32-wasi/debug/. The CLI reads from those paths at runtime.

Next step

Once the build passes, follow the expedition example walkthrough to see the full runtime in action, including the browser adapter and React demo.

For more detail, see the quickstart documentation.