When I add this to my project

buildFeatures {
        compose = true
    }

I get the following error:

com.intellij.openapi.externalSystem.model.ExternalSystemException: Could not create task ':app:compileDebugKotlin'.
org/jetbrains/kotlin/gradle/tasks/KotlinCompile

Any ideas why? Im trying to use compose alpha 10 on the latest canary AS and kotlin 1.4.21

Did you added also following lines:

composeOptions {
        kotlinCompilerVersion kotlinVersion
        kotlinCompilerExtensionVersion rootProject.ext.compose_version
    }
kotlinOptions {
        jvmTarget = "1.8"
        useIR = true
    }

yes I did. those lines compile fine and I can use the compose functions in code, but without the buildFeatures block, it crashes at runtime