canton-devkit

canton-devkit runs a complete local Canton network on your machine. You get two participant/validator nodes and a super-validator node, each with its own party (app-user, app-provider, super-validator) and JWT. Manage the stack from a single CLI or a local Web UI.

Website: https://bitdynamics-ab.github.io/canton-devkit/

HackCanton Season 3 starter: install → one working example → common breaks.

Requires Docker and Compose v2, about 8 GB of free RAM for Docker, and about 20 GB of free disk. See the installation guide for details.

Quick start

canton-devkit localnet doctor
canton-devkit localnet up demo
canton-devkit localnet status demo
eval "$(canton-devkit localnet env demo)"
canton-devkit localnet down demo

dpm localnet <cmd> and canton-devkit localnet <cmd> are interchangeable.

Commands

The command surface covers the full development loop:

Area	Commands
Lifecycle	up down stop start restart pause resume clean list status logs
Host checks	doctor — the same preflight up runs, with remediation hints
App wiring	env creds — endpoints, party IDs, and JWTs for tests and CI
DAR management	dar upload / list / info / download / diff / remove / build-upload / watch
Ledger inspection	contracts ls / watch · tx ls / replay
Tokens	token create / mint / transfer / burn / balance
State	snapshot / restore — a portable .tgz of a network's full state
Versions	versions — pinned Splice releases, keyed by commit SHA

Features

• Instance lifecycle management
• Host preflight checks with remediation hints
• App wiring for endpoints, party IDs, and JWTs
• DAR upload, inspect, diff, and hot redeploy
• Live ledger inspection (contracts and transactions)
• Token flows for CIP-0056 and Token Standard V2 — see the tokens guide
• Snapshot and restore of a network's full state
• Both CLI and Web UI are available
• Prometheus and Grafana
• Stable exit codes and --format json for CI; example workflow in examples/ci/
• Multiple named instances with auto-allocated or pinned ports (--port-base)

Install

DPM (primary): add the DevKit OCI component to your project's daml.yaml under components, remove the sdk-version field, then run dpm install package. Full steps: Installation & Getting Started.

Standalone (macOS / Linux):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitdynamics-ab/canton-devkit/main/install.sh | sh

Release archives (macOS arm64, Linux amd64, Windows amd64), SHA256SUMS, Homebrew (brew install bitdynamics-ab/canton-devkit/canton-devkit), and go install are documented in the same guide.

Agent skills

Install the six LocalNet workflow skills for your coding agent with the Skills CLI (npx skills, plural):

npx skills add bitdynamics-ab/canton-devkit --skill '*' --agent codex claude-code

See skills/ for individual skills, local and global installation, the scope assessment, and regeneration instructions. DevKit also ships the same catalogue through canton-devkit localnet skills install and the Web UI.

Documentation

Canonical docs live on the website: https://bitdynamics-ab.github.io/canton-devkit/.

Source Markdown also lives under docs/ for browsing in the repository:

• Guides: getting started · HackCanton Season 3 starter · explorer · observability · dashboard customization · tokens · homebrew
• Reference: versions · packaging · telemetry · FAQ · troubleshooting · limitations

This is a developer tool, not a production deployment path. For production Canton, see the official Canton documentation.

For bugs and usage questions, open an issue. For general Canton and Daml questions, use the Canton forum.

Download statistics

Standalone vs DPM breakdowns and per-platform totals: detailed download statistics.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the build, test, and lint setup and project conventions: a regression test for every fix, CLI/Web-UI feature parity, SHA-pinned CI actions.

To work on the documentation site locally, see website/DEVELOPMENT.md.

canton-devkit builds on the work of the Splice and Canton teams.

License

Apache 2.0