Development Setup

Set up the SPECTER workspace for local development, testing, and contribution

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.88+ (rustup update stable)
• Node.js 18+ (for frontend)
• Git

Clone and build

git clone https://github.com/pranshurastogi/SPECTER.git
cd SPECTER/specter
cargo build

The workspace compiles 12 crates. First build takes a few minutes; subsequent builds are incremental.

Run tests

cargo test

This runs the full test suite (~195 tests) across all crates. Tests cover:

• ML-KEM key generation, encapsulation, decapsulation
• Stealth address derivation and scanning
• View tag computation and verification
• API route handlers
• Registry backends
• Name service resolution
• Yellow channel operations

Run the API server locally

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env if you want to configure Pinata, Turso, etc.
# Default: memory registry, no external dependencies needed

cargo run --bin specter-cli -- serve

Server starts on http://localhost:3001. The memory registry works out of the box for development.

Workspace structure

specter/
├── specter-core/       # Shared types, errors, constants
├── specter-crypto/     # ML-KEM-768, SHAKE-256, view tags
├── specter-stealth/    # Payment creation and discovery logic
├── specter-scanner/    # Batch scanning engine
├── specter-registry/   # Announcement storage (memory + Turso)
├── specter-cache/      # Lock-free concurrent cache
├── specter-ens/        # ENS name resolution
├── specter-suins/      # SuiNS name resolution
├── specter-ipfs/       # IPFS via Pinata
├── specter-yellow/     # Yellow Network integration
├── specter-api/        # Axum REST server
└── specter-cli/        # CLI tool

Frontend development

cd SPECTER-web
npm install
npm run dev

Frontend runs on http://localhost:5173. Edit VITE_API_URL in .env to point at your local backend.

Scripts

The scripts/ directory has helpers:

Script	Purpose
build-and-test.sh	Build all crates + run tests
e2e-stealth-flow.sh	Full end-to-end payment test
interactive-ens-test.sh	ENS resolution demo
rebuild-backend.sh	Quick backend rebuild

CI/CD

GitHub Actions runs on every push to main and on PRs:

1. rustfmt - Code formatting check
2. clippy - Lint with warnings-as-errors
3. cargo test - Full test suite

Make sure cargo fmt --check and cargo clippy -- -D warnings pass before pushing.

Contributing

PR workflow and conventions.

Architecture

How the crates connect.