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Installation & Building Guide

This guide walks you through setting up Code-Reducer, building from source, utilizing pre-compiled binaries, and performing your first documentation run.

System Prerequisites

Before installing Code-Reducer, ensure your system meets the following requirements:

  1. Go Runtime: Version 1.26 or higher (required only if building from source).
  2. Ollama Engine: Running locally (or accessible over network) with at least one compatible open-weight model pulled: 
    ollama pull ornith:9b
# or
ollama pull gemma4:26b
  3. Git: Installed and available in system PATH.

Building from Source

To compile Code-Reducer directly from source code:

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/arrase/code-reducer.git
cd code-reducer

2. Compile the Binary

Build the binary target using go build:

go build -o code-reducer main.go

This compiles a single, statically linked binary named code-reducer in your current working directory.

3. Optional: Install to System PATH

To invoke code-reducer globally across any repository on your machine, copy the compiled binary to a directory included in your system PATH:

sudo cp code-reducer /usr/local/bin/

Or install directly via go install:

go install github.com/arrase/code-reducer@latest

Pre-Compiled Release Binaries

If you prefer not to install the Go toolchain, pre-compiled release binaries are attached to every official release on GitHub:

  1. Navigate to the GitHub Releases page: https://github.com/arrase/code-reducer/releases
  2. Download the appropriate binary archive for your OS and architecture (e.g., code-reducer_linux_amd64.tar.gz).
  3. Extract the archive and grant executable permissions:
chmod +x code-reducer

Quick Start Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Follow these three steps to document a repository using Code-Reducer:

Step 1: Run Configuration Setup (setup)

Navigate to your target repository root and run the setup wizard:

code-reducer setup

The wizard will prompt you for model parameters, context limits, and ignored patterns, generating a .code-reducer.yaml configuration file.

Step 2: Initialize Documentation (init)

Perform the initial repository scan and Map-Reduce synthesis:

code-reducer init

Code-Reducer will scan source files, build module briefings under wiki/modules/, write system blueprints (wiki/architecture.md, wiki/quickstart.md), create the metadata cache (wiki/.metadata.json), and generate AGENTS.md.

Step 3: Keep Docs Updated (update)

Whenever files are added, modified, or deleted in your repository, run:

code-reducer update

Code-Reducer will calculate file SHA256 hashes, compare them against .metadata.json, and incrementally rebuild only changed files and impacted parent modules.