Rescile Quick Start Guide

This guide will walk you through building a dependency graph of your infrastructure using rescile-ce.

We’ll start with a minimal “Hello, World” example and progressively build a more realistic model representing a hybrid environment with on-premise and cloud resources, including applying a compliance control.

Before You Begin

To follow this guide, you need the rescile-ce binary installed and accessible in your system’s PATH. You can verify the installation by running rescile-ce –version. See the Installation & Setup guide for detailed instructions. Download the latest version or run rescile-ce update.

For easy project based setup have a look into the bootstrap repository.

First, let’s create a project folder named my-infra-graph and the necessary subdirectories:

mkdir -p my-infra-graph/data/{assets,models,compliance,output}
cd my-infra-graph

All subsequent file paths in this guide will be relative to the my-infra-graph directory.

Step 1: The “Hello, World” Graph - Creating a Derived Resource

Goal: Model a single application and derive a server resource from it. This demonstrates the core workflow: Assets -> Models -> Compliance -> Output.

flowchart LR
    subgraph "Phase 1: Ground Truth"
        A["<div style='text-align:left; padding: 5px;'><i class='fa-solid fa-file-csv fa-fw'></i> <b>Assets</b><br>Define components<br>in CSV files.</div>"]
    end
    subgraph "Phase 2: Architecture"
        B["<div style='text-align:left; padding: 5px;'><i class='fa-solid fa-code fa-fw'></i> <b>Models</b><br>Transform assets<br>with TOML files.</div>"]
    end
    subgraph "Phase 3: Governance"
        C["<div style='text-align:left; padding: 5px;'><i class='fa-solid fa-shield fa-fw'></i> <b>Compliance</b><br>Enforce policies<br>with TOML files.</div>"]
    end
    subgraph "Phase 4: Output"
        R["<div style='text-align:left; padding: 5px;'><i class='fa-solid fa-file-invoice fa-fw'></i> <b>Output</b><br>Generate artifacts<br>with TOML files.</div>"]
    end
    subgraph "Phase 5: Actions"
        ACT["<div style='text-align:left; padding: 5px;'><i class='fa-solid fa-bolt fa-fw'></i> <b>Actions</b><br>Trigger tasks<br>via APIs/MCP.</div>"]
    end
    subgraph "Result"
        G["<div style='text-align:left; padding: 5px;'><i class='fa-solid fa-sitemap fa-fw'></i> <b>Queryable Graph</b><br>A model<br>of your estate.</div>"]
    end
    A -- "Provide Ground Truth" --> B -- "Define Architecture" --> C -- "Enforce Policy" --> R -- "Generate Artifacts" --> G
    G -. "Automate Operations" .-> ACT

1. Define the Foundational Asset

Assets are the ground truth of your environment. Create a CSV file to define a single application. The filename (application.csv) becomes the resource’s type, and the first column (name) is its primary key.

Verified examples: every CSV/TOML block in this guide is included directly from the tested fixture workspace examples/quickstart-step1 (and, from step 2 on, examples/quickstart). These are validated against rescile-ce on every change — run just verify locally.

data/assets/application.csv

name,owner,runtime
billing-api,team-alpha,java

2. Create an Architectural Model

Models transform assets into a richer graph. We will create a server.toml model that unconditionally creates one server resource for every application resource.

data/models/server.toml

# The origin resource type to read from (from application.csv).
origin_resource = "application"

# The [[create_resource]] block defines a rule for creating new resources.
# Since there is no 'match_on' key, this rule applies to every 'application' resource.
[[create_resource]]
# The type of the new resource.
resource_type = "server"
# The type of the new relation.
relation_type = "RUNS_ON"
# The primary key (name) for the new server.
# The template `{{origin_resource.name}}` accesses the 'name' property of the application.
name = "{{origin_resource.name}}_server"
# Define properties for the newly created server resource.
[create_resource.properties]
os = "Linux"
managed_by = "{{origin_resource.owner}}" # Inherit the owner from the application

3. Build and Verify the Graph

Now, run the rescile-ce command-line tool to process your assets and models and generate the graph.

# Start the server
rescile-ce --data-dir ./data serve

Open your browser to http://localhost:7600 and run the following query in the GraphiQL interface:

query VerifySimpleGraph {
  application(filter: {name: "billing-api"}) {
    name
    owner
    server {
      properties {
        relation
      }
      node {
        name
        os
        managed_by
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "data": {
    "application": [
      {
        "name": "billing-api",
        "owner": "team-alpha",
        "server": [
          {
            "properties": {
              "relation": "RUNS_ON"
            },
            "node": {
              "name": "billing-api_server",
              "os": "Linux",
              "managed_by": "team-alpha"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

1. An application resource named billing-api.
2. A server resource named billing-api_server with properties os="Linux" and managed_by="team-alpha".
3. An relation type RUNS_ON connecting (application:billing-api) to (server:billing-api_server).

graph TD
    App["application<br><b>billing-api</b>"] -- RUNS_ON --> Server["server<br><b>billing-api_server</b><br>{os: Linux,<br>managed_by: team-alpha}"]

Before the start with step 2, we will save the current graph to compare at the end of the step.

rescile-ce --data-dir ./data save step1.json

Continue with Quickstart: Hybrid Model & Compliance — add conditional platform modeling, database assets, and your first compliance control.