Three minutes from install to a signed capsule flowing through a local MCP endpoint.

Goal: run the local prototype flow and inspect the receipt it records in under three minutes.

0. Prerequisites

Node 20+ (node --version → v20.x or higher)
That's it. No Meow sandbox token, no veto.so account.

1. Run the offline demo (30s)

npx @veto/meow-gateway demo

This command does six things in one process:

Generates an Ed25519 signing keypair under a temp dir
Boots the gateway with the bundled ap_strict_v1 policy pack
Upserts a bank beneficiary, computes its canonical hash
Mints a signed Spend Capsule for meow.pay $500 ACH to Acme
Consumes the capsule through a mock Meow upstream (no network)
Fetches the per-entity receipt chain and prints the recorded payload

Expected final output:

✓ Ed25519 capsule signed, verified, consumed
✓ Decision receipt chained off genesis
✓ Receipt payload written locally (no Veto-hosted service)

If you don't see that, something's wrong, please file a bug.

2. Boot a persistent gateway (2 min)

Once the demo proves the pipeline, you probably want a gateway that sticks around.

# Generate signing keys once:
npx @veto/meow-gateway keygen

# Boot the server (defaults to localhost:3005):
npx @veto/meow-gateway start

The gateway serves:

GET /health + GET /ready
GET /.well-known/veto-keys.json, JWKS for your signing kid
POST /v1/capsules, mint
POST /v1/onboarding/applications, start a KYB application
POST /v1/routing/suggest, pick a rail
POST /meow/mcp, MCP server surface
POST /meow/consume, REST consume surface

3. Mint a capsule via curl

curl -sX POST http://localhost:3005/v1/capsules \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "entity_id": "ent_demo_0000000000000000",
    "agent_id": "agent_local",
    "tool": "meow.pay",
    "rail_allowlist": ["ach"],
    "counterparty_hash": "sha256:<hash>",
    "amount_ceiling": { "currency": "USD", "amount": "500.00" },
    "invoice_hash": "sha256:<invoice>",
    "workflow_id": "wf_demo0000000000000000abcd",
    "ttl_seconds": 300
  }'

Response includes the signed JWS. Inspect the three parts with any JWS decoder, the payload is the full canonical capsule.

4. Consume it

curl -sX POST http://localhost:3005/meow/consume \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jws": "<paste JWS>",
    "tool": "meow.pay",
    "rail": "ach",
    "counterparty_hash": "sha256:<hash>",
    "amount": { "currency": "USD", "amount": "500.00" }
  }'

On allow, the response includes the upstream Meow result AND the newly-chained decision receipt.

5. Connect veto.so (optional)

npx @veto/meow-gateway connect

This flips the gateway from local-only to hybrid mode: receipts and workflows still live locally (your disk is canonical), but a dashboard at veto.so/dashboard/meow mirrors them for team review + HITL approvals. Self-host stays sovereign, disconnecting is a single env var flip.

Where to go next

Self-host runbook, key rotation, backup, upgrades
Concepts: Spend Capsule, what's inside the JWS
Protocol reference, canonical JSON rules + golden vectors

Quickstart