---
title: "Getting started with Dagger"
description: "1. Setup BuildKitd - If you have `docker` installed locally and no `BUILDKIT_HOST` env var, `buildkitd` will be started automatically for you when you invoke `dagger`. - Otherwise, you can use the `BUILDKIT_HOST` env var to point to a running `buildkitd`. [More information here](https://docs.dagger.io/1223/custom-buildkit/). 2. Build `dagger` and make sure it's in your PATH - `go build ./cmd/dagge"
type: skill
canonical_url: https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com/skills/2ku9n-getting-started
source: "Claudary"
difficulty: intermediate
author: "Claude Code Knowledge Pack"
date: 2026-07-10T10:59:10.057Z
license: CC-BY-4.0
attribution: "Getting started with Dagger — Claudary (https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com/skills/2ku9n-getting-started)"
---

# Getting started with Dagger
1. Setup BuildKitd - If you have `docker` installed locally and no `BUILDKIT_HOST` env var, `buildkitd` will be started automatically for you when you invoke `dagger`. - Otherwise, you can use the `BUILDKIT_HOST` env var to point to a running `buildkitd`. [More information here](https://docs.dagger.io/1223/custom-buildkit/). 2. Build `dagger` and make sure it's in your PATH - `go build ./cmd/dagge

## Overview

---
slug: /2ku9n/getting_started
displayed_sidebar: "0.3"
---

# Getting started with Dagger

## Install

1. Setup BuildKitd
   - If you have `docker` installed locally and no `BUILDKIT_HOST` env var, `buildkitd` will be started automatically for you when you invoke `dagger`.
   - Otherwise, you can use the `BUILDKIT_HOST` env var to point to a running `buildkitd`. [More information here](https://docs.dagger.io/1223/custom-buildkit/).
2. Build `dagger` and make sure it's in your PATH
   - `go build ./cmd/dagger`
   - `ln -sf "$(pwd)/dagger" /usr/local/bin`
3. (Optional) Setup Docker Credentials
   - If you are receiving HTTP errors while pulling images from DockerHub, you might be getting rate-limited.
   - You can provide credentials to dagger by running `docker login` on your host and signing into a DockerHub account, which may help avoid these.

## Basic Invoking

Simple alpine example:

```console
dagger -p examples/alpine/dagger.json do <<'EOF'
{
  alpine{
    build(pkgs:["curl"]) {
      exec(input: {args:["curl", "https://dagger.io"]}) {
        stdout(lines: 1)
      }
    }
  }
}
EOF
```

Yarn build (output will just be encoded fs bytes for now, need to add export or shell util to dagger CLI interface):

```console
dagger -p examples/yarn/dagger.json do --local-dir source=. --set runArgs=build
```

## Development

### Invoking Actions

#### With Dagger CLI

TODO: document more, but see `Invoking` section above for some examples and `cmd/dagger/main.go` for implementation

#### With Embedded Go SDK

TODO: document more, but the idea here is that you can also write your own `main.go` that, similar to `cmd/dagger/main.go`, calls `engine.Start` and then do anything you want from there with the full power of Go rather than being limited to the CLI interface of `dagger`. Eventually, this embedding use case should be possible from any of our supported languages (e.g. Typescript).

### Modifying Core

TODO: document, currently just see `api/graphql.go` for existing core action implementations and schema definition.

---

Source: [Claudary](https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com/skills/2ku9n-getting-started) · https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com