spade setup

The spade setup command creates the local Spade directory structure and initializes the block registry. Run this once after installing the CLI, or any time you need to recreate the environment.

Usage🔗

spade setup

What it creates🔗

The command creates the following directory tree (by default at ~/.spade/):

~/.spade/
  auth/         # Session credentials from `spade login`
  blocks/       # Installed block collections
  cache/        # Content-addressed cache of block outputs
  pipelines/    # Working directories for pipeline runs
  registry.db   # SQLite registry of installed blocks

Each subdirectory is created with 0755 permissions. The registry.db file is a SQLite database that tracks every installed block, its collection, version, language, entrypoint, and content hash. The auth/ directory starts empty; it's populated by spade login when you authenticate to the cloud registry.

Flags🔗

Flag	Description
`--rebuild-index`	Rebuild the block registry by scanning the `blocks/` directory on the filesystem

`--rebuild-index`🔗

If the registry database becomes out of sync with the installed block files (for example, after manually copying or removing block directories), the --rebuild-index flag re-scans ~/.spade/blocks/ and repopulates registry.db from what it finds on disk:

spade setup --rebuild-index

This is a non-destructive operation -- it reads the filesystem and updates the database to match. It does not remove any installed files.

Custom install location🔗

By default, Spade stores everything under ~/.spade/. To use a different location, set the SPADE_DIR environment variable before running setup:

export SPADE_DIR=/data/spade
spade setup

All subsequent Spade commands will use the directory specified by SPADE_DIR. If the variable is unset, they fall back to ~/.spade/.

When to use it🔗

After first install. The CLI will not function correctly without the directory structure and registry database.
After upgrading Spade. If a new version changes the registry schema, spade setup will apply any migrations.
After manual filesystem changes. If you move, copy, or delete block directories by hand, run spade setup --rebuild-index to bring the registry back into sync.
On a new machine. If you copy your ~/.spade/blocks/ tree to another machine, run spade setup --rebuild-index to initialize the registry from the existing files.

Example output🔗

  Created /home/user/.spade
  Created /home/user/.spade/auth
  Created /home/user/.spade/blocks
  Created /home/user/.spade/cache
  Created /home/user/.spade/pipelines
  Initialized registry at /home/user/.spade/registry.db
Spade setup complete.