The Arcature Guide

Arcature is a full-stack web framework for Rust. One crate, batteries included: HTTP routing, the Inertia protocol, a database layer, authentication, validation, background jobs, events, cache, storage, mail, and the arc command-line tool. One dependency line is the whole install – see Getting started, and the Status section below for what “one crate” currently buys you.

It is opinionated. It integrates proven components — Axum, Tower, Tokio, SeaORM, SQLx, OpenDAL, lettre, tracing — and owns what sits between them: the application lifecycle, the request pipeline, the conventions, and the vocabulary. Where the opinions run out, the underlying crates are re-exported and reachable.

What this guide assumes

That you know Rust, and that you have written a web application before in something. It does not re-teach async, and it does not explain what a migration is. It does explain what Arcature does differently from what you would expect, and why.

How to read the examples

Every code sample in this guide was written against the code as it exists, not against the API as it is planned. Where a feature is documented but not built, the chapter says so under a Not yet implemented heading and shows what works today instead. A missing example costs you a search; a wrong one costs you an afternoon.

Samples elide use statements when the prelude covers them:

use arcature::prelude::*;

Status

arcature 0.1.2 is on crates.io. 0.1.0 was the first release of this codebase, there is no upgrade path from anything earlier, and the API is still moving. Neither patch since removes anything or changes a signature, so arcature = "0.1" carries you to both: 0.1.1 added fourteen subsystems, all behind feature flags that are off by default, and 0.1.2 fixes two controls that were not doing what their configuration said. Read the changelog and the upgrade note before relying on anything here.

The 2026.x versions under the arcature* names on crates.io come from an abandoned predecessor repository. They are yanked and share nothing with this codebase but the name.

Versioning is semantic, starting at 0.1.0. Under 0.x the fields shift one place left: a minor bump is the breaking one, a patch bump is compatible, and Cargo reads them that way too, so arcature = "0.1" will not silently carry you to 0.2.

Where the reasoning lives

Doc comments explain what a type does. This guide explains how the pieces fit. Decisions explains why some of them are shaped in ways that will surprise you: no npm package, one TCP port in development, a fixed layer order, no hidden registry.