# Guard not initialized

**URL:** <https://discourse.hanakai.org/t/guard-not-initialized/1357>\
**Category:** questions\
**Created:** [December 15, 2025, 3:00pm UTC](https://discourse.hanakai.org/t/guard-not-initialized/1357 "2025-12-15T15:00:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sebastjan\_hribar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.hanakai.org/sebastjan_hribar/32/323_2.png) [@sebastjan\_hribar](https://discourse.hanakai.org/u/sebastjan_hribar)\
**Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 3:00pm UTC](https://discourse.hanakai.org/t/guard-not-initialized/1357/1 "2025-12-15T15:00:01Z")

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Hi,

I’ve just installed the latest Ruby and Hanami (Hanami version: 2.3.2 • Ruby version: ruby 3.3.2 (2024-05-30 revision e5a195edf6) [x86\_64-linux]) and when creating a new project this error popped up: No Guardfile exists at Guardfile.

After initializing the guard manually, it worked fine and the app booted.

Is there a reason this has to be done manually? I haven’t found any reference to it in the guides.

best, seba

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**Author:** ![timriley](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.hanakai.org/timriley/32/621_2.png) [@timriley](https://discourse.hanakai.org/u/timriley)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 7:57am UTC](https://discourse.hanakai.org/t/guard-not-initialized/1357/2 "2025-12-16T07:57:35Z")

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This sounds your `hanami new` command didn’t fully complete. `hanami new` will internally run `hanami install`, which create files supplied by other bundled gems. In this case, `hanami install` is needed for the hanami-reloader gem to generate your `Guardfile`. Did you see any errors when you were running `hanami new`?

Either way, if you manually run `bin/hanami install` inside your app, it should generate all these necessary files for you 🙂

This is the kind of thing that you could test out on a new hanami project too. If you run `hanami new some_new_app` today, does it generate the `Guardfile`?