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This is the tutorial to start with if you’re new to ObsidianLog. It uses the local backend, so there’s nothing to set up beyond downloading a binary. If it works here, you know the core pipeline (encrypt, compress, hash-chain, query, verify) is solid before you touch Sia at all. Takes about five minutes.

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1. Get the binary

If you haven’t already, download and extract the release binary for your system. Installing a release binary in the Quickstart has the full walkthrough for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Not sure which file to grab in the first place? See the FAQ.

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2. Run init

You’ll be asked a handful of questions: storage bucket name, which backend (choose local), where to store data on disk, the ingest server’s bind address, and the chunk time window. The defaults are fine for testing, just press Enter through each one. On macOS, you should see at most one keychain authorization prompt during this step. Click Always Allow rather than just Allow, so later commands don’t ask again. When it finishes, you’ll see something like:

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3. Start the server

The terminal won’t return to a prompt after this, it keeps running and waiting for log batches. That’s expected, leave it running and open a new terminal for the rest of this tutorial.

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4. Send it a test log

A successful ingest has an empty body, so the 200 printed on its own line (from -w on macOS/Linux, .StatusCode on Windows) is the actual confirmation, not the absence of output. Without it, a successful request and a hung one look identical: no output either way, so it’s included above rather than left optional.

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5. Query it back

You should see the log line you just sent, decrypted and printed back to you.

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6. Verify the chain

This walks the hash chain and confirms nothing archived has been tampered with. You’ll see a line starting with OK naming the tutorial service and how many chunks were verified.

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Tell us how it went

That’s the whole loop. Whether it went smoothly or you got stuck somewhere, please open a feedback report either way, any bugs, friction, or feature requests are worth mentioning.

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What’s next

If this worked, try Connecting to Sia to see it archive to the real Sia network instead of your local disk, or Trying Out Vector to see a real log shipper feed it instead of a single curl request. This already set up your real, default config, not a scratch folder, so there’s nothing further to migrate. Try Returning User next. When you finish the tutorial, return to the terminal running serve and press Ctrl-C to stop it.