Venus

A reactive notebook environment for Rust.

What is Venus?

Venus lets you write Rust notebooks as regular .rs files with full IDE support. Cells are functions marked with #[venus::cell], and dependencies between cells are automatically inferred from function parameters.

⚠️ Security Warning

Venus executes arbitrary Rust code with full system access.

• ✅ Safe for: Local development, testing, learning
• ❌ NOT safe for: Production, shared servers, untrusted code
• 🔒 Cloud deployments: Providers MUST use containers/VMs for isolation

Venus provides NO sandboxing. Cells can access files, network, and spawn processes. You are responsible for running Venus in a secure environment.

See SECURITY.md for details.

Features

• Interactive web UI - Monaco editor with syntax highlighting, cell outputs, and execution status
• Native Rust files - Write notebooks as .rs files with full rust-analyzer support
• Reactive dependency tracking - Dependent cells marked dirty when upstream changes
• Fast compilation - Cranelift JIT backend with smart caching (only recompiles when source changes)
• Hot reload - Run modified cells instantly without losing state from other cells
• Markdown cells - Full markdown support with syntax highlighting, images, and links
• Interactive widgets - Sliders, text inputs, dropdowns, and checkboxes
• Rich output - Render HTML, images, tables, and custom formats
• Jupyter export - Generate .ipynb files for GitHub preview

Markdown Support

Venus supports rich markdown cells with full GitHub Flavored Markdown syntax:

• Text formatting - Bold, italic, code blocks with syntax highlighting
• Links and images - External URLs and embedded images
• Code blocks - Multi-language syntax highlighting
• Lists and tables - Organized documentation

Quick Start

# Install Venus
cargo install venus

# Create a new notebook (adds to Cargo.toml for LSP support)
venus new my_notebook

# Or create as workspace member
venus new my_notebook --workspace

# Run the notebook
venus run my_notebook.rs

# Start the interactive server
venus serve my_notebook.rs

Venus automatically creates/updates Cargo.toml to enable rust-analyzer LSP support.

Then open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Example

use venus::prelude::*;

/// Configuration for the analysis
#[venus::cell]
pub fn config() -> Config {
    Config { count: 10 }
}

/// Generate squared numbers
#[venus::cell]
pub fn numbers(config: &Config) -> Vec<i32> {
    (1..=config.count).map(|i| i * i).collect()
}

/// Calculate the sum
#[venus::cell]
pub fn total(numbers: &Vec<i32>) -> i32 {
    numbers.iter().sum()
}

CLI Commands

Command	Description
venus run <notebook>	Execute notebook headlessly
venus serve <notebook>	Start interactive web server
venus sync <notebook>	Generate .ipynb file
venus build <notebook>	Build standalone binary
venus new <name>	Create new notebook
venus export <notebook>	Export to standalone HTML
venus watch <notebook>	Auto-run on file changes

Documentation

See the docs directory for detailed documentation:

• Installation - Platform-specific setup instructions
• Getting Started - Create your first notebook
• How It Works - Internal execution model and architecture
• API Reference - Build custom frontends
• Deployment - Production deployment options
• Cells - Cell syntax and dependencies
• Widgets - Interactive inputs
• CLI Reference - Command-line interface
• Render Trait - Custom output formatting
• API Stability - Versioning and breaking change policy

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit issues and pull requests.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for details.