Understanding any

Developer workflow

Development against any is one long-running server process on your machine and whatever clients you point at it. This page is the loop you will repeat: init, run, call, inspect.

1. Init an account

any init

Creates ~/.any/ (mode 0700), generates an account, writes ~/.any/<accountId>/wallet.key, and prints the BIP-39 mnemonic to stderr once. Back it up. Re-running any init when an account exists is a no-op that lists them.

To attach a second machine to the same account, restore from the phrase — the account id is the same, the device key is fresh:

any init --mnemonic-stdin < phrase.txt      # never copy wallet.key between machines

2. Run the server

any run                                     # foreground, 127.0.0.1:7001
any run --addr 127.0.0.1:0                  # ephemeral port; prints "LISTENING <addr>" on stdout
any run --account <id>                      # pick one when the data dir holds several

any run is foreground-only: run it in a terminal, tmux, or a user service. It never creates a wallet — on a fresh data dir it starts unauthorized and every route except /v1/health, /v1/shutdown, /v1/openapi.json, /v1/auth answers 401 auth.required until POST /v1/auth (or any auth login) boots an account in place (Accounts).

Stop it with Ctrl-C or:

any stop                                    # POST /v1/shutdown — drains in-flight, 10 s deadline

3. Check health

any status                                  # GET /v1/health

{ "status": "ok", "version": "any v0.3.0 (sdk v0.2.4)",
  "startedAt": "2026-08-24T09:00:00Z",
  "account": "A8tR…", "bootstrapping": false }

bootstrapping: true means the background space-loading pass is still running; the server is serving already.

4. Call it

Everything is http://127.0.0.1:7001/v1/… with JSON bodies. Pick whichever client fits:

Client	When
`curl`	Exploring; the curl quickstart creates a space, an object, and a subscription.
`any …` CLI	Scripts and shells — one subcommand per endpoint, pretty JSON on stdout, `jq`-friendly (CLI quickstart).
Web UI	`http://127.0.0.1:7001/ui` — a debug harness with a space picker, object tree, chat, members, and a network log. Disable with `webUI.enabled: false`.
Your app	Any HTTP client; live updates are SSE over a streaming POST (JavaScript, Python).

any --verbose space get $SPACE              # log the HTTP exchange to stderr
any --addr 127.0.0.1:7002 status            # a second server on another port

When the server is down the CLI exits 3 with start it with any run in another terminal; it never auto-starts one.

5. Inspect

Sync — any sync-status space $SPACE, any sync-status subscribe.
Search index — any search $SPACE "reranker"; check vectorStatus in the reply.
Raw datasets — any query-subscribe $SPACE $OBJ --dataset chat_messages --limit 20 --sort='-_ver.id' prints one JSON line per SSE frame.
Diagnostics — any debug space $SPACE / any debug object $SPACE $OBJ dump head-sync counters and per-object tree state (unstable output, diagnostic only).
Logs — one stream on stderr through the SDK logger; --log-level debug or ANY_LOG_LEVEL=debug. Add log.addOutputPaths: ["~/.any/server.log"] to tee to a file (Debugging).

The data dir

~/.any/                         # dataDir — a ROOT that can hold several accounts
├── config.yaml                 # optional
├── models/                     # shared embedder model cache (~600 MB, downloaded once)
└── <accountId>/
    ├── wallet.key              # 0600
    ├── server.pid              # single-instance lock (stale PIDs reclaimed)
    ├── sdk/                    # any-store databases — owned by the SDK
    ├── files/                  # file bytes, one CARv2 per root CID
    └── index/                  # local search index — derived, safe to delete

Two servers may share a root as long as they serve different accounts on different ports. The index/ directory is derived state: removing it is safe, but re-indexing covers content changed after the removal. Never delete files/ by hand — a file that has not been backed up yet has its only copy there (Data dir).

Config precedence is file → ANY_* env → flags; the file is looked up at --config, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/any/config.yaml, ~/.config/any/config.yaml, then <data-dir>/config.yaml (Configuration).

Building from source

make build                                  # → ./any (+ bin/llamacpp for the local embedder)
go test ./...

Use make build, not a bare go build: the full-text and vector search legs are behind build tags that the Makefile passes, and a tag-less binary serves /search with zero hits and a single boot-time warning. On NixOS run builds and the binary through nix develop -c … so the local embedder finds libffi (Builds and CI).

Note. An unconfigured binary syncs against the production network. For experiments use a staging or local nodeconf via ANY_NETWORK_NODECONF_PATH, or the embedded placeholder that joins no network at all (Networks).