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Get started

This page takes you from clone to a running gateway in under five minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Go 1.25+ (build only — release binaries have no runtime Go dependency)
  • An Anthropic or OpenAI API key
  • Optional: tokens for any channel you want to enable (see Channels)

1. Get the binary

git clone https://github.com/ageneralai/maven.git
cd maven
make build

Output: ./maven.

Pre-built artifacts for darwin/arm64, linux/amd64, linux/arm64 are produced by make package-all and attached to GitHub Releases:

curl -L https://github.com/ageneralai/maven/releases/latest/download/maven-linux-amd64.gz \
  | gunzip > maven
chmod +x maven

docker build -t maven .
docker run -d -v maven-data:/root/.maven -p 18790:18790 maven

See Deployment: Docker.

2. Configure

Run the interactive setup, which writes ~/.maven/config.json (mode 0600):

make setup

Or copy config.example.json to ~/.maven/config.json and edit by hand. The minimal config needs a provider key:

{
  "provider": {
    "type": "anthropic",
    "apiKey": "sk-ant-..."
  },
  "agent": {
    "workspace": "~/.maven/workspace",
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929",
    "maxTokens": 8192,
    "maxToolIterations": 20
  }
}

Full schema: Reference: Configuration.

3. Initialize the workspace

make onboard

This creates the default workspace at ~/.maven/workspace with AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, HEARTBEAT.md, an empty memory/MEMORY.md, and a skills/ directory. See Guides: Workspace.

4. Try the CLI

One-shot:

./maven agent -m "What can you do?"

Interactive REPL:

make run

5. Start the gateway

Run channels, cron, heartbeat, and memory consolidation in one process:

make gateway

Healthy startup logs look like:

INFO gateway running host=0.0.0.0 port=18790
INFO gateway channels started channels=[web]
INFO cron started jobs=0
INFO heartbeat started interval=30m0s

The default Web UI is reachable at http://localhost:18790 (enable it under channels.web in config).

Next steps