Getting Started

Getting Started

This page gets you from a clone to a running SPARC instance with the NIST catalogs seeded, in about fifteen minutes.

Prerequisites

• Docker + Docker Compose (recommended path), or
• Ruby 3.4.4, PostgreSQL 15, and (optionally) Redis for local development.

1. Run with Docker (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/risk-sentinel/sparc.git
cd sparc
docker compose up --build

The web service comes up on http://localhost:3000. Compose uses offset host ports to avoid clashing with local services — PostgreSQL on 5433 and Redis on 6380 (see Configuration).

2. Seed the NIST catalogs

docker compose exec web bin/rails db:seed

This loads the NIST SP 800-53 Rev 4 + Rev 5 control catalogs, the 29 RBAC roles, the FedRAMP 20x KSI catalog, and the framework converters.

3. Local development (without Docker)

bundle install
bin/rails db:create db:migrate db:seed
bin/rails server

The development database is ssp_tpr_manager_development; the test database is ssp_tpr_manager_test.

4. First login

All authentication modes default to disabled (whitelist approach). For a local instance, enable email/password login:

SPARC_ENABLE_LOCAL_LOGIN=true

Then bootstrap an admin (Instance Admin) account:

docker compose exec web bin/rails sparc:bootstrap_admin

For SSO, see Integrations and docs/OKTA_DEV_SETUP.md. For local HTTPS, see docs/development-https.md.

5. Where to go next

Goal	Start here
Understand the UI	Screens & UI
Understand the features	Core Functions & Features
Configure auth / env vars	Configuration
Integrate via the API	API Reference
Understand roles & permissions	RBAC
Learn the architecture	Architecture
Look up a term	Glossary

Common first-run issues

See FAQ & Troubleshooting and docs/troubleshooting.md.