curl quickstart

Bare HTTP, no SDK. Five minutes to your first signed call and a parsed receipt in stdout.

No SDK, no build step. This recipe uses curl and jq to call the Glide MCP gateway directly. You will authenticate with an HMAC-signed JWT, call payments.initiate, and inspect the returned receipt. Audience: backend engineers evaluating Glide before committing to an SDK.

Prerequisites

• curl and jq installed (brew install jq on macOS).
• Glide running locally per the main quickstart, or access to a hosted Glide instance.
• A dev secret: MCP_TOKEN_VERIFIER_DEV_SECRET set in your environment (32-byte hex string).

If you haven’t set a dev secret yet, generate one now:

echo "MCP_TOKEN_VERIFIER_DEV_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" >> apps/web/.env.local
export MCP_TOKEN_VERIFIER_DEV_SECRET=$(grep MCP_TOKEN_VERIFIER_DEV_SECRET apps/web/.env.local | cut -d= -f2)

Steps

1. Set environment variables

export GLIDE_MCP_URL="http://localhost:8787"
export GLIDE_DEV_SECRET="$MCP_TOKEN_VERIFIER_DEV_SECRET"
export GLIDE_AGENT_ID="agent_curl_demo"
export GLIDE_ACCOUNT_ID="acc_demo_01"

2. Mint a short-lived dev JWT

The dev verifier accepts HMAC-SHA256 JWTs signed with the shared secret. Use the glide CLI to mint one:

export GLIDE_TOKEN=$(pnpm glide token:mint \
  --secret "$GLIDE_DEV_SECRET" \
  --sub "agent_curl_demo" \
  --aud "glide-mcp" \
  --ttl 300)

echo $GLIDE_TOKEN
# → eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...

In production, tokens come from your Ory Hydra deployment via client_credentials. See the OAuth flow for the full RFC 7591 walk-through.

3. Verify the gateway is reachable

curl -s "$GLIDE_MCP_URL/healthz" | jq .

Expected output:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "uptime": 142
}

4. Inspect available tools

curl -s -X POST "$GLIDE_MCP_URL/mcp/read" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GLIDE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' \
  | jq '.result.tools[].name'

Expected output (abbreviated):

"accounts.list"
"accounts.balance"
"audit.stream"
"transactions.list"

5. Check an account balance

curl -s -X POST "$GLIDE_MCP_URL/mcp/read" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GLIDE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{
    \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\",
    \"id\": 2,
    \"method\": \"tools/call\",
    \"params\": {
      \"name\": \"accounts.balance\",
      \"arguments\": {
        \"accountId\": \"$GLIDE_ACCOUNT_ID\"
      }
    }
  }" | jq '.result'

6. Initiate a payment

curl -s -X POST "$GLIDE_MCP_URL/mcp/write" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GLIDE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{
    \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\",
    \"id\": 3,
    \"method\": \"tools/call\",
    \"params\": {
      \"name\": \"payments.initiate\",
      \"arguments\": {
        \"fromAccountId\": \"$GLIDE_ACCOUNT_ID\",
        \"toAddress\": \"0x742d35Cc6634C0532925a3b8D4C9C5E9F2b4D6A1\",
        \"amountUsdc\": \"12.50\",
        \"memo\": \"Invoice INV-2026-042\",
        \"idempotencyKey\": \"curl-demo-$(date +%s)\"
      }
    }
  }" | jq '.result'

7. Parse the receipt

A successful call returns a Receipt object:

{
  "receiptId": "rcpt_01hwzk4n3mbt6c9a5vzd7qp2xr",
  "status": "completed",
  "amountUsdc": "12.50",
  "toAddress": "0x742d35Cc6634C0532925a3b8D4C9C5E9F2b4D6A1",
  "txHash": "0xabc...def",
  "chain": "base",
  "timestamp": "2026-05-04T11:23:01.482Z",
  "agentId": "agent_curl_demo",
  "policyEnvelopeId": "env_01hwzk4m9kbt6c9a5vzd7qp2xy"
}

The txHash field is the on-chain transaction hash. You can verify it independently at basescan.org/tx/<txHash>.

Run it

The full sequence above as a single script:

bash examples/curl-quickstart/run.sh

Expected stdout:

[1/4] gateway health ... ok
[2/4] tool catalog ... 22 tools available
[3/4] account balance ... $1,000.00 USDC
[4/4] payment initiate ... rcpt_01hwzk4n3mbt6c9a5vzd7qp2xr status=completed

Extend it

• Add --header "Idempotency-Key: ..." to make the payment call safe to retry.
• Pipe the receiptId into audit.stream to watch event delivery in real time.
• Replace the HMAC dev token with a production Ory JWT — no other change needed.
• Wire the receipt into a Slack webhook for payment confirmation alerts.
• Try a call that should fail policy (amount above cap) and inspect the -32003 error body.

Source

github.com/darshanbathija/axtior-neobank/tree/main/examples/curl-quickstart

Reading list

• OAuth flow — production JWT issuance via Ory Hydra.
• Receipt schema — every field in the receipt object.
• Tool reference — full input/output schemas for all 22 tools.
• Money-safety contracts — the F-rules every payment path enforces.