fluid init

Create a new project with the fastest local-first path into Fluid Forge.

Syntax

fluid init NAME

Key options

Examples

fluid init my-project
fluid init my-project --quickstart
fluid init my-project --template customer-360
fluid init --list-templates
fluid init my-project --provider snowflake

--discover — introspect a source into a Bronze contract

Instead of writing the acquisition block by hand, point fluid init at a source URI and it emits a deterministic 0.7.5 Bronze (SDP) contract per discovered stream:

fluid init --discover postgres://user:pass@host:5432/dbname
fluid init --discover mysql://user:pass@host:3306/dbname
fluid init --discover file:///path/to/csv-tree
fluid init --discover s3://bucket/prefix/

What it does:

• Connects to the source (read-only — \dt for Postgres, SHOW TABLES for MySQL, directory walk for filesystem)
• Emits one acquisition contract per discovered table or stream
• Sets metadata.layer: Bronze AND metadata.productType: SDP (both vocabularies — see Product Types)
• Auto-redacts secrets from the connection string into ${ENV_VAR} placeholders (so the emitted contract is safe to commit)
• Picks engine: duckdb by default for embedded ingestion (no Airbyte cluster required)

Output shape (one file per discovered stream):

my-project/
├── public.orders.fluid.yaml          # one contract per table
├── public.customers.fluid.yaml
├── public.products.fluid.yaml
└── .fluid/

You can then fluid validate and fluid apply immediately, or open the files and tweak the engine choice / quality rules / retention horizons. See Source-Aligned Acquisition for the full framework, or the Postgres → DuckDB walkthrough for an end-to-end example.

Notes

• The promoted newcomer path is fluid init ... --quickstart, then validate, plan, and apply.
• As of 0.10.0, scaffolds emit contracts using fluidVersion: 0.7.5. --discover also emits 0.7.5. Older 0.7.4 / 0.7.3 / 0.7.2 contracts remain valid.
• If you want AI-assisted scaffolding instead, use fluid forge.

Fastest path — fluid demo

If you want to see FLUID working end-to-end in about 30 seconds rather than create your own project first, use fluid demo. It scaffolds a working customer-360 example with sample data and runs the pipeline immediately — zero setup, no API key, no cloud account, local DuckDB.

fluid demo [NAME]

Options

Examples

fluid demo
fluid demo my-customer-360
fluid demo --dry-run
fluid demo my-project --no-run

After fluid demo completes you have a normal FLUID project — fluid validate, fluid plan, fluid apply all work against it. Use --no-run when you want to inspect the generated contract and SQL before executing the pipeline.