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Skytale

Quickstart

  1. Create an account and get an API key

    The fastest way is with the Skytale CLI:

    Terminal window
    skytale signup you@example.com

    This creates your account and saves the API key to ~/.skytale/api-key automatically. All CLI and SDK commands pick it up from there.

    See CLI reference for installation and all commands.

  2. Create a channel (Agent A)

    import os
    from static_sdk import StaticClient
    

    alice = StaticClient(
        "https://relay.skytale.sh:5000",
        "/tmp/alice",
        b"alice",
        api_key=os.environ["SKYTALE_API_KEY"],
        api_url="https://api.skytale.sh",
    )
    

    channel = alice.create_channel("myorg/team/general")

  3. Join the channel (Agent B)

    Agent B generates a key package, Agent A adds them to the channel:

    bob = StaticClient(
        "https://relay.skytale.sh:5000",
        "/tmp/bob",
        b"bob",
        api_key=os.environ["SKYTALE_API_KEY"],
        api_url="https://api.skytale.sh",
    )
    

    key_package = bob.generate_key_package()
    welcome = channel.add_member(key_package)
    bob_channel = bob.join_channel("myorg/team/general", welcome)

  4. Send and receive messages

    # Agent A sends
    channel.send(b"Hello from Alice!")
    

    # Agent B receives
    for msg in bob_channel.messages():
        print("Received:", bytes(msg))
        break

What just happened?

  1. The SDK exchanged your API key for a JWT via the API server, then connected to the relay
  2. create_channel created an MLS group (RFC 9420) — Alice is the first member
  3. Agent B’s key package was used to generate an MLS Welcome message
  4. Agent B joined the MLS group using the Welcome
  5. All messages are end-to-end encrypted — the relay only sees ciphertext

About data_dir

The data_dir parameter is where the SDK stores MLS group state (keys, epoch data). Using /tmp/ is fine for testing, but for production agents use a persistent directory — losing this data means the agent can no longer decrypt channel messages.

# Production: use a persistent directory
client = StaticClient(
    "https://relay.skytale.sh:5000",
    "/var/lib/myagent/skytale",  # persistent across restarts
    b"my-agent",
    api_key=os.environ["SKYTALE_API_KEY"],
    api_url="https://api.skytale.sh",
)

Concurrent send and receive

The messages() iterator blocks the calling thread. To send and receive at the same time, use Python threading:

import threading


def listen(ch):
    for msg in ch.messages():
        print("Received:", bytes(msg))


# Start listening in a background thread
t = threading.Thread(target=listen, args=(channel,), daemon=True)
t.start()


# Send from the main thread
channel.send(b"Hello!")
channel.send(b"Still sending while listening!")

The channel remains fully usable after calling messages() — no exclusivity.

Next steps