Backend stack tutorials
Three short tutorials that take you from a running stack to a live dashboard demo
See the whole stack demo at once booting all the Worker families for a live site, mock hardware, a Gateway API, and a React dashboard in one command.
Overview
This page presents three short tutorials that build on each other. Each rung adds one layer of capability: first you watch the stack run, then you drive it, then you run a browser demo on top.
| Rung | You'll | You'll end with | Mock hardware | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Run the stack | Observe — run one command and watch a stack come up | Device list, telemetry, and commands printed | Whatsminer M56S | < 3 min |
| 2. Control devices from the CLI | Interact — drive a running stack from a REPL | Live telemetry and commands over HRPC via the kernel key file | Whatsminer M56S | < 3 min |
| 3. Run the dashboard demo | Run — launch a browser dashboard on the stack | A React dashboard with live charts at :3030 | Whatsminer M56S | < 15 min after a one-time UI build |
New to MDK? Start with 1. Run the stack. Each rung links to the next, so you can climb straight through.
All three rungs use the same Whatsminer example to keep things simple. To see MDK working with different hardware, check out the full site example which runs multiple Worker families (Antminers, Whatsminers, containers, power meters) simultaneously — all using the same MDK API.
Each rung is self-contained and repeats the clone-and-install step, so you can start at whichever one you need.
Next steps
- If Kernel, Worker, manager, or thing are unfamiliar, read
terminology.md - Build the smallest version of the full MDK stack: **one Worker, one Gateway route, one static HTML page
- Run the full stack demo