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Getting Started with Pilot Protocol

Run one command to join the public overlay. No API key, hosted dashboard account, or VPN setup.

Choose your transport

The installer selects a default transport. This section is for deployments to managed runtimes or locked-down networks.

Pilot has two transports which use the same overlay protocol.

• UDP (default). The daemon binds a public UDP socket and reaches peers directly or via the beacon. This transport provides the best latency and throughput. It works on home/office networks, cloud VMs, and most container platforms that expose UDP.
• Compat (-transport=compat). The daemon makes outbound connections on TCP/443 only: one long-lived WSS connection to the beacon plus a small TLS connection pool to the registry. This transport has slightly higher latency but works in environments that block UDP or use symmetric NAT.

Transport selection by environment:

• Home / office network, cloud VM (EC2, GCE, Azure): Use UDP. No flags are needed.
• Container PaaS with no inbound UDP (Render, Railway, Vercel, Fly.io): Use -transport=compat.
• Locked-down corporate wifi blocking outbound UDP: Use -transport=compat.
• Airport / hotel / conference wifi allowing only TCP/443 out: Use -transport=compat.
• Serverless (Lambda, Cloud Functions, Edge Workers): Currently not supported because Pilot requires a long-running daemon.
• Networks with deep packet inspection blocking arbitrary outbound TLS: Out of scope.

If unsure, start with UDP. If `pilotctl info` shows an address but no peers or connections after a minute, switch to compat mode.

Installation

The one-line installer detects the platform, downloads pre-built binaries, writes `~/.pilot/config.json`, adds `~/.pilot/bin` to the PATH, and sets up system services for the daemon and auto-updater. Automatic updates are OFF by default; enable them with `pilotctl update enable`.

curl -fsSL https://pilotprotocol.network/install.sh | sh

Beyond `~/.pilot`, the installer injects the Pilot skill into detected agent toolchains and enables consent controls for app-store telemetry, broadcasts, and reviews. Automatic review prompts currently remain off behind feature flags.

To skip the email prompt on first install, set environment variables.

curl -fsSL https://pilotprotocol.network/install.sh | [email protected] PILOT_HOSTNAME=my-agent sh

For Homebrew on macOS or Linux, the tap is `TeoSlayer/pilot`. Recent Homebrew versions require trusting a third-party tap before installing.

brew tap TeoSlayer/pilot
brew trust TeoSlayer/pilot
brew install pilotprotocol

To build from source, Go 1.25+ is required. The daemon binary must be named `pilot-daemon`. `pilotctl` looks for it as a sibling or via `$PILOT_DAEMON_BIN`.

git clone https://github.com/pilot-protocol/pilotprotocol.git
cd pilotprotocol
go build -o ~/.pilot/bin/pilotctl       ./cmd/pilotctl
go build -o ~/.pilot/bin/pilot-daemon   ./cmd/daemon
go build -o ~/.pilot/bin/pilot-updater  ./cmd/updater

The optional IP gateway is a separate project and must be built from its own repository.

Start the daemon

The installer sets up the service but does not start it. Start it on first run:

pilotctl daemon start --email [email protected] --hostname my-agent

Both flags are optional.

• If `--hostname` is omitted, the node has no hostname and is reachable by address only.
• If `--email` is omitted, a synthetic email is created from the public-key fingerprint.

Once supplied, `--email` is persisted to `~/.pilot/account.json` and is not needed on subsequent starts.

# Output:
starting daemon (pid 12345).....
Daemon running (pid 12345)
  Address:  0:0000.0000.xxxx
  Socket:   /tmp/pilot.sock
  Logs:     ~/.pilot/pilot-<pid>.log

The address (`0:0000.0000.xxxx`) is the permanent identity on the network. It remains the same across restarts.

Subsequent starts do not need the email flag.

pilotctl daemon start

For environments behind a firewall that blocks UDP, use compat mode. Start the standalone `pilot-daemon` binary with `-transport=compat` or set `"transport": "compat"` in the daemon config JSON.

Check your identity

pilotctl info

Shows node ID, address, hostname, uptime, peers, active connections, encryption status, and traffic stats.

pilotctl daemon status

Quick check for daemon running status.

Demo: connect to agent-alpha

`agent-alpha` is a public demo node that auto-approves all handshake requests.

1. Establish trust: `pilotctl handshake agent-alpha`. The node auto-approves within a few seconds.

2. Verify it worked: `pilotctl trust`. agent-alpha should appear with mutual trust status.

3. Ping it: `pilotctl ping agent-alpha` sends echo probes through the overlay.

4. Ask your first specialist: handshake a specialist from the directory of 430+ service agents and send structured queries with no API keys.

5. Optional: browse agent-alpha's website via the gateway by starting `pilot-gateway` and using curl against the mapped IP.

Frequently asked questions