Quickstart

Choose the path that matches what you want to do:

Single file — write one .ocat file and run it immediately with ocat run
Full project — scaffold a project with ocm initialize and run it with ocm run

Single file
Full project

Create a source file

Create a file named hello.ocat:

hello.ocat

print("Hello, World!")

Run the file

Pass the file to ocat run:

ocat run hello.ocat

Expected output:

Hello, World!

ocat run only accepts .ocat files by default. If you want to run a file with a different extension, pass the -f / --force flag:

ocat run hello.oc --force

Run the initializer

ocm initialize

ocm initialize (also aliased as ocm init) starts an interactive prompt. Answer each question to configure your project:

? How do you want to name your project? myProject
? Where do you want to create your project? myProject
? What is your project ID? my-project
? What type of project do you want to create? App

Prompt	Default	Description
Project name	`myProject`	Human-readable name stored in `config.json`
Directory	same as name	Folder created on disk
Project ID	dash-case of name	Unique identifier for the project
Type	—	`App` (produces a `main.ocat` entry point) or `Lib` (no entry point)

Review the generated structure

After initialization, ocm creates the following layout:

myProject/
├── src/
│   └── main.ocat
├── connection/
└── .ocat/
    └── config.json

The generated src/main.ocat already contains a working program:

src/main.ocat

print("Hello World!")

The .ocat/config.json file stores project metadata and points ocm run to the entry file:

.ocat/config.json

{
    "name": "myProject",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "",
    "id": "my-project",
    "main": "src/main.ocat",
    "type": "app"
}

Run the project

From inside the project directory, run:

cd myProject
ocm run

Expected output:

Hello World!

ocm run reads main from .ocat/config.json and passes it to the OCat executor automatically. Logs are written to .ocat/logs.txt when the process exits.

For library projects (type: Lib), no main.ocat is generated and ocm run is not applicable. Use ocat run on individual files instead.

Get Started

Language Guide

CLI Reference

Project Management

Resources

Next steps

Language guide

CLI reference

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get Started

Language Guide

CLI Reference

Project Management

Resources

​Next steps

Language guide

CLI reference

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Next steps