Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following installed:

Tool	Version	Purpose
Node.js	20+	Runtime for the API, dashboard and docs
pnpm	9.15+	Package manager (monorepo workspaces)
Docker	20+	PostgreSQL (the only Docker service in this repo)
Git	2+	Version control (the chain is a git submodule)
Go	1.21+	Only if you run the local chain node from source

The chain (cbdc-node) is a Go / Cosmos SDK binary (cbdcd). For local development you build and run it from the apps/chain submodule via pnpm dev:chain (which invokes the chain Makefile), so a Go toolchain is required for an end-to-end local stack. The API can also point CHAIN_RPC_ENDPOINT at an already-running remote node, in which case you don't need to run a node locally.

Install pnpm

If you don't have pnpm installed:

corepack enable
corepack prepare pnpm@9.15.4 --activate

Verify

node --version    # v20+
pnpm --version    # 9.15+
docker --version  # 20+