Your First Scan

Prerequisites

• An Arcanon Hub account (sign up)
• The scanner installed (instructions)

1. Set up credentials

Get your API key from Settings > API Keys in the dashboard:

export ARCANON_API_KEY=arc_your_key_here
export ARCANON_HUB_URL=https://api.arcanon.dev

2. Scan your repo

From your repo root:

arcanon

The scanner runs locally — detecting services, endpoints, and connections from your code. Results are uploaded to your Hub workspace.

Want to preview first?

arcanon --dry-run

3. View in the dashboard

Open the dashboard and go to Architecture. Your services appear as nodes in the graph with connections between them.

• Click a node to see endpoints, schemas, and drift
• Use filters to focus by language, repo, or team
• Check Impact to see what breaks if a service changes

Tips for better results

Install your dependencies before scanning. The scanner analyses installed packages to find connections made through internal SDKs and wrapper functions:

npm ci          # Node.js
pip install -r requirements.txt  # Python
bundle install  # Ruby

Add .arcanon.toml if the scanner misdetects service names or misses services:

[services."packages/api"]
name = "api-server"

Run in CI to keep the graph up-to-date with every push. See CI integration.

What gets detected

Next steps

• Service Graph — Navigate and explore your architecture
• Impact Analysis — Understand blast radius before changes
• Drift Detection — Catch version and schema drift