Documentation

The dora Book

Comprehensive guide to building real-time robotics and AI applications with dora. From installation to distributed deployment, everything you need to know.

Read the Book

Getting Started

Installation

Install the dora CLI and runtime on Linux, macOS, or Windows

Quickstart

Build and run your first dataflow in under 5 minutes

Concepts

Architecture

CLI, Coordinator, Daemon, and Node layers explained

Dataflow YAML

Define pipelines as directed graphs with typed inputs and outputs

Type Annotations

Static type checking for dataflow connections

Modules

Compose reusable sub-graphs as standalone YAML files

Communication Patterns

Topic, Service, Action, and Streaming patterns

Language APIs

Rust

Native Rust node and operator APIs

Python

PyO3-based Python bindings with full API parity

C

FFI bindings for embedded and legacy systems

C++

CXX bridge with Arrow data support

Operations

CLI Reference

Complete command reference for the dora CLI

Logging

Structured logging with rotation, routing, and aggregation

Debugging

Topic inspection, trace viewing, and resource monitoring

Fault Tolerance

Restart policies, health checks, and circuit breakers

Distributed Deployment

Multi-machine clusters with SSH and label scheduling

Performance Tuning

Queue sizes, shared memory thresholds, and Arrow optimization

Real-Time Tuning

SCHED_FIFO, mlockall, CPU affinity, and kernel parameters

Dynamic Topology

Add, remove, connect, and disconnect nodes at runtime

Advanced

ROS2 Bridge

Bidirectional interop with ROS2 topics, services, and actions

WebSocket Control

Programmatic control via the WebSocket API

WebSocket Topics

Stream topic data over WebSocket for web UIs

Development

Testing Guide

Unit tests, integration tests, smoke tests, and TDD workflow

Additional Resources

Rust API Docs GitHub Repository Discord Community