Getting Started

Installation & Quickstart

Get Essence running locally in under a minute

Prerequisites

Rust (latest stable)
Optional: Chromium/Chrome (for browser engine fallback)

Install from Source

git clone https://github.com/ruchit-p/essence.git
cd essence/backend
cp .env.example .env
cargo run --release

The server starts at http://localhost:8080.

Docker

git clone https://github.com/ruchit-p/essence.git
cd essence
docker-compose up -d

No external dependencies — no Redis, no PostgreSQL. Just the Essence service.

Verify It Works

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/scrape \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com"}'

You should get back a JSON response with the page content as clean Markdown.

Next Steps

Configuration — environment variables and tuning
API Reference — full endpoint docs

Introduction

Essence — the fastest open-source web scraper for LLMs

Configuration

Environment variables and server configuration

On this page

Prerequisites Install from Source Docker Verify It Works Next Steps