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Friend Tester Guide

This is the shortest path for testing Marrow with your own source material: create an account, save your API key, configure the CLI, ingest one source, and ask one evidence-backed question.

1. Sign Up

Open console.marrow.id, create an account, and copy the setup block shown after signup.

The key is shown once. Treat it like a password: do not paste it into chat, screenshots, GitHub issues, docs, or source files. If you lose it, create a replacement key in the console account panel and revoke the old one.

2. Install And Configure

npm install -g @marrow/cli
MARROW_API_KEY=<raw API key from console> marrow api configure
marrow api config

api configure writes hosted API settings to ~/.marrow/config.json with file mode 0600. api config confirms whether a key is configured without printing the key.

3. Ingest Your First Source

Start with one source that is clearly about you: a personal site page, bio, talk page, project README, blog post, or public interview. Avoid private or confidential material for the first test.

Preview the ingest plan first:

marrow api ingest-url --dry-run --dated-at 2026-05-16 https://example.com/my-bio

Then queue the live ingest. Replace the date with the date the source was authored or published:

marrow api ingest-url \
  --dated-at 2026-05-16 \
  --idempotency-key first-source-2026-05-16 \
  https://example.com/my-bio

For a local file:

marrow api ingest-file --dry-run --dated-at 2026-05-16 ./source.md
marrow api ingest-file --dated-at 2026-05-16 ./source.md

Poll until the job status is succeeded, failed, or quarantined:

marrow api ingest-jobs --limit 5
marrow api ingest-job <job_id>

If the job is quarantined, Marrow kept the rows out of normal reads because the source did not connect cleanly to the account owner or one of their known projects, publications, organizations, repositories, or tools.

4. Run Your First Query

After the ingest job succeeds, ask a concrete question about the source:

marrow api query "What evidence supports my current work?" --limit 5 --evidence-limit 3

The response is retrieval-only. It returns ranked typed records, snippets, and source-note evidence instead of generated answer text.

5. Understand Credits

Free beta accounts start with onboarding credits plus monthly credits. Monthly credits are used first.

  • Each evidence query costs 1 credit.
  • Distilled ingest costs vary with estimated source and model work.
  • Live ingest also counts against ingest queue quotas.
  • The console account panel shows remaining monthly and onboarding credits.
  • If credits run out, query or ingest returns account_credits_exhausted and no additional model call is made.

6. What To Send Back

Send the source URL or file type, ingest job id, query you ran, and whether the evidence looked right. Do not send your API key.

Agent Testing Prompt

Use a temporary API key when handing Marrow to an agent session. Revoke that key after the test.

Paste this prompt into the agent, replacing the placeholder with the temporary key:

You are testing my Marrow account as an external API and CLI user.

Rules:
- Never print, repeat, summarize, or save the API key except through the CLI
  configure command.
- Treat the key like a password. Anyone with it can use this Marrow account
  until the key is revoked.
- Use only the commands and endpoints listed in this prompt.
- If a command fails, report the command, exit status, and short error summary
  without printing secrets.
- Do not invent facts beyond returned Marrow evidence.

Base URL:
https://api.marrow.id

API key:
<PASTE TEMPORARY KEY HERE>

Phase 1: direct API check
1. Run: curl -sS https://api.marrow.id/health
2. Run account overview with Authorization: Bearer <API key>.
3. Run recent ingest jobs: GET /v1/ingest/jobs?limit=5
4. Run POST /v1/query with:
   {"query":"What evidence supports my current work?","limit":5,"evidenceLimit":3}

Phase 2: CLI install and configure
1. Run: npm install -g @marrow/cli
2. Run: marrow --help
3. Run: marrow api --help
4. Run: MARROW_API_KEY='<PASTE TEMPORARY KEY HERE>' marrow api configure
5. Run: marrow api config

Confirm that config says apiBaseUrl is https://api.marrow.id and
apiKeyConfigured is true. Do not print the key.

Phase 3: CLI query
Run:
- marrow api api-keys
- marrow api ingest-jobs --limit 5
- marrow api query "What evidence supports my current work?" --limit 5 --evidence-limit 3
- marrow api query "What projects or outcomes are represented in this account?" --limit 5 --evidence-limit 3
- marrow api query "What should you not claim about me?" --limit 5 --evidence-limit 3

Final report:
1. API health and auth result
2. CLI install and configure result
3. Query result summary with top titles/snippets and evidence excerpts
4. Any confusing gaps
5. Whether this is ready for a non-technical friend tester

More detail lives in the Quickstart, Marrow CLI, and Account API reference.