Setup

The consensus command gives you the whole network from a terminal: tunnels, proxying, WebSockets, and leased IPs. Run it with no arguments for the full-screen TUI, or call a command directly.

1. Install

The CLI runs on Bun 1.3.0 or newer. Install Bun, then the package:

curl -fsSL https://bun.com/install | bash
npm install -g @canister-software/consensus-cli

Check that it works:

consensus help

2. Set up credentials

During the public beta the network runs in free mode, so you can skip this step: every command works without credentials.

When payment is enabled, run setup once:

consensus setup

It offers two modes:

• Self-managed keys (recommended). Enter an EVM private key, a Solana keypair, and optionally the path to an ICP PEM file. Setup writes them as CONSENSUS_EVM_KEY, CONSENSUS_SVM_KEY, and CONSENSUS_PEM_PATH to your shell profile, and payments are signed locally. Keys never leave your machine. Run the source command setup prints, or open a new shell, to load them.
• Managed wallet. Creates a wallet from your Coinbase Developer Platform credentials, set as CDP_API_KEY_ID, CDP_API_KEY_SECRET, and CDP_WALLET_SECRET in a .env file. The keys are held by the proxy service.

Payments settle on test networks: Base Sepolia, Solana Devnet, and ICP’s TESTICP ledger. Setup prints your addresses with faucet links so you can fund them.

To start over, run consensus setup --force.

Treat these keys as live credentials

Self-managed keys sit in plain text in your shell profile. Use wallets that hold only what you are comfortable spending, and never commit your shell profile or .env to version control.

3. Try it

Expose a local web server on a public HTTPS URL:

consensus tunnel http localhost:3000

Send one request through the network:

consensus proxy fetch https://api.example.com/prices --verbose

List nodes, then pin your traffic to one of them, and so to its IP address:

consensus ip list --region east-us
consensus ip lease <node-id-or-domain>

Usage lists every command and option.

Where the CLI keeps its state

The CLI stores its configuration, leased node, preferences, and session history in ~/.consensus/. Self-managed keys live in your shell profile, not in that directory.