Install and Start Locally

Production clients talk to a hub. For learning and tests, MAC also supports an explicit standalone PostgreSQL authority selected with --db. It is deliberately not an offline replica: nothing written here synchronizes to another hub.

The documentation lab supplies DOCS_DB as a disposable PostgreSQL DSN. Outside the lab, point it at your own database and keep passing it explicitly:

export DOCS_DB=postgresql://<user>@127.0.0.1:5432/<database>

mac --db "$DOCS_DB" admin init
mac --db "$DOCS_DB" admin diagnostics
mac --db "$DOCS_DB" task stats --all

A successful diagnostic report ends with ok: True. The database is now a complete single-process authority suitable for the foundational chapters.

For repository development, python3 scripts/bootstrap-project.py creates the project environment and make test runs the mandatory contract gate. Those are checkout-maintenance operations, while mac --db ... drives the product.

Never point direct database mode at a running hub's authority. Production authority is reached through a scoped client profile and the hub API; stopped-hub maintenance requires the explicit --local-authority recovery mode.