> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://cast.exakt.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Introduction
> Cast is a lightweight, powerful utility. Designed to enable actuaries, data scientists, and pricing professionals to easily run analytical queries on local CSV and Parquet files. Built on top of DuckDB, this tool allows users to leverage SQL-like queries for rapid exploration and analysis of their data without requiring a complex database setup.
### Features
**Query Local Files:** Run SQL queries directly on CSV and Parquet files stored locally.
**Ease of Use:** Simple streamlit webapp to run and manage your queries on.
**Blazing Fast Analytics:** Powered by DuckDB, optimised for analytical queries on large datasets.
**Lightweight:** No database setup or configuration required—just point to your files and start querying.
**Extensibility:** Designed for pricing and actuarial workflows but flexible enough for general-purpose analytics.
### Who Should Use Cast?
This tool is perfect for:
**Actuaries:** Quickly explore insurance data, summarise portfolios, and validate assumptions.
**Data Scientists:** Perform ad-hoc analysis on datasets without loading them into a database.
**Pricing Professionals:** Join, clean and analyze datasets that can be used in your pricing models.
## Setting up
The first step to world-class data processing and analysis is setting up your python environment and then to install the cast app.
Follow the step by step process to install and setup python locally.
Install cast using your terminal.
## How to use Cast
View the detailed docs for each of the main functions within the Cast app.
Write queries to your heart's desire.
Generate simple one-way views of the queried data.
Build complex visualisations of the queried data.
Configure your Cast setup.
