Getting started

This guide gets you from nothing to a working SealStack gateway serving MCP tools and REST endpoints in about ten minutes. Everything runs locally with Docker Compose.

Prerequisites

Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine + Compose plugin)
Rust 1.87+ — only required if you’re building the CLI from source. Pre-built binaries are attached to each GitHub release.
cfg CLI on your $PATH.

1. Start the dev stack

Clone the repo and bring up Postgres, Qdrant, and the gateway:

git clone https://github.com/bwiemz/sealstack.git
cd sealstack
docker compose -f deploy/docker/compose.dev.yaml up -d

You should see the gateway come up on port 7070, Postgres on 5432, and Qdrant on 6333/6334.

Verify the gateway is reachable:

curl -s http://localhost:7070/healthz
# {"status":"ok"}

2. Define a schema

Create schemas/doc.csl:

namespace examples

schema Doc v1 {
  id:    ID @primary
  title: String @indexed
  body:  Text @searchable @chunked

  context {
    embedder        = "stub"
    vector_dims     = 64
    chunking        = semantic(max_tokens = 400, overlap = 40)
    freshness_decay = exponential(half_life = 30d)
  }
}

Compile and apply it. The CLI turns CSL into a JSON schema meta the gateway understands and POSTs it via /v1/schemas:

sealstack schema apply schemas/doc.csl

3. Register a connector

Point the local-files connector at a directory of markdown:

mkdir -p sample-docs
echo "# Setup\nUse Postgres 16." > sample-docs/setup.md
sealstack connector add local-files --schema examples.Doc --root ./sample-docs

Then trigger a sync:

sealstack connector sync local-files/examples.Doc

4. Query

sealstack query --schema examples.Doc "what does the setup doc say about postgres?"

You’ll get hits plus a receipt id. Fetch the receipt to see why each source surfaced:

sealstack receipt show <receipt-id>

5. Next

CSL Tutorial — model a multi-schema domain
MCP Tools — connect Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client
Deployment — move off Compose to a real Kubernetes install