Installation

Choose your setup

Approach	When to use
API only	You just want to call endpoints. Use the hosted backend.
Frontend only	You want to run the web app locally against the hosted API.
Full stack	You want everything running on your machine.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.88+ (for backend)
• Node.js 18+ (for frontend)
• Docker (optional, for containerized backend)

Backend setup

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/pranshurastogi/SPECTER.git
cd SPECTER/specter

# Copy environment config
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your values (Pinata, Turso, etc.)

# Build and run
cargo build --release
cargo run --release --bin specter -- serve

The API server starts on http://localhost:3001.

Using Docker

cd SPECTER/specter
docker build -t specter .
docker run -p 3001:8080 --env-file .env specter

Frontend setup

cd SPECTER/SPECTER-web
npm install
npm run dev

The frontend starts on http://localhost:5173 and connects to the configured backend URL.

CLI usage

The specter binary supports standalone operations:

# Generate keys
cargo run --bin specter -- generate

# Create a stealth payment
cargo run --bin specter -- create --meta-address <META_ADDRESS>

# Scan for payments
cargo run --bin specter -- scan --viewing-sk <HEX> --spending-pk <HEX> --spending-sk <HEX>

# Run benchmarks
cargo run --bin specter -- bench

# Start API server
cargo run --bin specter -- serve

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
REGISTRY_BACKEND	No	memory (default) or turso
TURSO_DATABASE_URL	For turso	libSQL connection string
TURSO_AUTH_TOKEN	For turso	Auth token
PINATA_JWT	For IPFS	Pinata upload credentials
PINATA_GATEWAY_URL	For IPFS	Your Pinata gateway
PINATA_GATEWAY_TOKEN	For IPFS	Gateway access token
ETH_RPC_URL	For ENS	Ethereum RPC endpoint
SUI_RPC_URL	For SuiNS	Sui RPC endpoint
API_KEY	No	Enables auth for write endpoints
ALLOWED_ORIGINS	No	CORS origins (default: *)
RATE_LIMIT_RPS	No	Requests per second (default: 10)

Verify it's working

curl -s http://localhost:3001/health | jq .
# Should return: {"status":"ok","version":"..."}

Then run the quickstart flow against http://localhost:3001 instead of the hosted backend.