Quick start guides and getting started
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Most "Hello World" tutorials get you to a running endpoint. This one gets you to a protected endpoint — with rate limiting, authentication, and an audit trail — because that's what production actually requires.
This is the freelancer edition: opinionated, fast, and realistic about what breaks first when you launch.
Run the complete STOA Platform stack on your local machine using Docker Compose. This tutorial shows you how to spin up the Control Plane API, Console UI, Developer Portal, MCP Gateway, Keycloak, and PostgreSQL — all configured and ready to use in under 10 minutes.
stoactl is the command-line interface for STOA Platform that brings kubectl-style API management to your terminal. Install it with one command, authenticate to your Control Plane API, and manage APIs, subscriptions, and MCP tools without touching the web console—ideal for scripting, CI/CD pipelines, and developers who prefer the terminal.
You define an API once. STOA exposes it as both a REST endpoint and an MCP tool — same policies, same monitoring, zero duplication. That is the Universal API Contract (UAC), and this tutorial walks you through it in 5 minutes.
Most API platforms force you to maintain separate configurations for each protocol: one for REST consumers, another for AI agents via MCP. That means duplicated rate limits, duplicated auth rules, and twice the surface area for misconfiguration. UAC eliminates that.
STOA Platform is an open-source API gateway designed for the AI era. In this tutorial, you'll go from zero to a working API endpoint in 5 minutes. No complex configuration, no hours reading docs — just clone, run, and publish your first API.
By the end, you'll have STOA's full stack running locally: Control Plane API, MCP Gateway, Developer Portal, Keycloak, and observability. You'll create an API, expose it through the gateway, and discover MCP capabilities.
AI agents need a secure, standardized way to access your APIs. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) provides that bridge, and STOA Platform makes it trivial to deploy. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to set up a production-ready MCP gateway using Docker Compose in under 10 minutes.
New to MCP gateways? Start with our comprehensive guide: What is an MCP Gateway? to understand the architecture and security model before deploying.
By the end of this guide, you'll have a running gateway that exposes your existing REST APIs to AI agents like Claude, connects to authentication, and enforces runtime policies.