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Quickstart

Run the full stack locally, then point an app at it. You need Docker with Compose, plus Python 3.9+ or Node 20+ for the app you instrument.

1. Start the stack

git clone https://github.com/tanisheesh/reqly
cd reqly
docker compose up -d

No .env is needed; the defaults work locally. The first build takes a couple of minutes. Compose starts four containers:

Container Address What it does
timescaledb localhost:5432 TimescaleDB with the Toolkit. The collector applies the schema on start-up
collector localhost:8000 Ingest, OTLP, metrics API, alerts, AI. /docs is the interactive API reference
dashboard localhost:5173 The web UI. Open this
load-generator — Backfills 8 weeks of synthetic history, then sends ~2 requests/second, including a few deliberate incidents

Open localhost:5173, pick a service, and the charts fill in within a minute. The backfilled history takes a little longer to show up in the 7-day view and the weekly report.

2. Instrument your app

The local stack accepts the ingest key demo-key.

pip install reqly

import reqly
from fastapi import FastAPI   # or Flask, Starlette, Litestar

app = FastAPI()
reqly.instrument(
    app,
    service_name="my-api",
    collector_url="http://localhost:8000",
    api_key="demo-key",
)

Django and other frameworks: see Python.

npm install reqly-node

import express from "express";
import { reqlyExpress } from "reqly-node";

const app = express();
app.use(reqlyExpress({
  serviceName: "my-api",
  collectorUrl: "http://localhost:8000",
  apiKey: "demo-key",
}));

Fastify, Hono, Koa and NestJS: see Node.js.

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:8000/otlp
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=x-reqly-key=demo-key
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-api

Per-language setup: see OpenTelemetry.

Send a few requests to your app. The service appears in the dashboard's service list. Data arrives every 5 seconds and shows in the charts within about a minute.

3. Optional: AI and alerts

Copy .env.example to .env and set what you need, then docker compose up -d again:

GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_...                 # AI weekly report and Ask Reqly (free key: console.groq.com/keys)
ALERT_SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=https://...  # or ALERT_DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL / ALERT_WEBHOOK_URL

Without a Groq key, the weekly report is a plain statistical summary and Ask Reqly is off. Every setting is listed in Configuration.

Stop or reset

docker compose down      # stop, keep data
docker compose down -v   # stop and wipe the database

Next steps