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Documentation Index

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Meerkat is an agent engine, not an agent product. Claude Code and Codex CLI are finished applications — Meerkat is what you’d build them on. It’s a set of modular Rust crates that handle the hard parts of agentic systems: state machines, retries, budgets, streaming, tool dispatch, MCP, multi-agent coordination. You bring your own prompts, tools, and opinions. Meerkat handles execution.

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Why Meerkat

  • Fast. Rust from the ground up. Lean native binaries and embeddable libraries, <10ms cold start in the core path, and no VM/runtime dependency stack.
  • Provider-agnostic. Same session/config model across Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini, with capability-gated differences where model support diverges.
  • Modular. A workspace of focused crates, all opt-in. Need just the agent loop? Pull in meerkat-core. Need session persistence? Add meerkat-store. Need inter-agent comms? Add meerkat-comms. Your binary includes only what you use. Disabled features return typed errors, not panics.
  • Stable. Deterministic state machine with defined transitions. Typed errors with compile-time guarantees. Every error code maps to a stable string across JSON-RPC, REST, and CLI exit codes.
  • Controlled. Hard budget limits on tokens, wall-clock time, and tool calls. Eight hook points for guardrails and audit. Shell security with allow/deny lists.
  • Multi-agent native. Independent agents communicate over Ed25519-signed channels, can be organized into mobs, and can keep working as compaction + semantic memory absorb conversations that exceed any single context window.

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How it compares

MeerkatClaude Code / Codex CLI / Gemini CLI
DesignLibrary-first, modular cratesCLI-first, SDK bolted on
ModularityCompose only what you needMonolithic, all-or-nothing
PerformanceSingle 5MB binary, <10ms startup, ~20MB RAMRuntime + dependencies
LanguagesRust core + Python & TypeScript SDKsTypeScript or Python
SurfacesCLI, REST, JSON-RPC, MCP server, language SDKsRich interactive TUI
Multi-agentNative Ed25519-authenticated P2P messagingNo
MemoryHNSW semantic indexing + auto-compactionFile-based context
Those tools excel at interactive development with rich terminal UIs. Meerkat has no TUI — it’s for automated pipelines, embedded agents, multi-agent systems, and anywhere you need programmatic control over an agent engine.

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Use it from anywhere

Rust SDK

Embed as a library.

Python SDK

Drive from Python.

TypeScript SDK

Drive from TypeScript.

CLI

Run from the terminal.

REST API

HTTP endpoints.

JSON-RPC

Stateful stdio for IDEs.

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Get started

The intended onboarding spine is: Introduction -> Quickstart -> Examples gallery -> choose a surface or workflow -> Concepts as needed

Quickstart

Get to a first successful run as fast as possible.

Examples gallery

The central real-code hub for choosing a language, surface, or workflow.

Auth setup

Configure credentials and bindings when you need more than the env-var fast path.

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Choose your path

Rust embedding

Start here if Meerkat is part of your Rust application.

Python / TypeScript

Start here if you want an SDK-backed product layer.

CLI / APIs

Start here if you are operating Meerkat as a practical surface first.

Multi-agent systems

Jump here if your main interest is orchestration and long-lived identity-first agents.

Self-hosting models

Start here if your first concern is local or self-managed models.

Architecture

Start here if you need ownership, rationale, or internal structure first.