Run a local Animica node
Bring up an animica node with `animica node up`, tail its logs, query the chain head, and stop it cleanly.
Start the node
Pick a network first — devnet is a single-node local chain ideal
for tutorials. Then start the node with animica node up. The CLI
runs the bundled Docker compose stack and waits for JSON-RPC to come
up.
animica network set devnet
animica node up
The first run pulls the animica/node image (a few hundred MB). When
the node is ready, RPC is reachable at http://127.0.0.1:8545.
Check status any time:
animica node status
Mark this step complete once animica node status reports the node
is running and healthy.
Tail the logs
Watch the node produce blocks in real time:
animica node logs --follow
You should see lines like:
info block accepted height=12 txs=0 hash=0xabc…
info block accepted height=13 txs=0 hash=0xdef…
On devnet the chain mines empty blocks continuously. Sending a tx (from
the wallet track) will produce a line with a non-zero txs count.
Press Ctrl-C to stop following — the node keeps running. Mark this step complete after you’ve seen at least a few block-accepted lines.
Query the chain head
The CLI talks to the node over JSON-RPC. The simplest way to confirm
this is the chain head helper:
animica chain head
It prints the current height, hash, and timestamp. For the same data via raw RPC (handy if you’re building tooling), use:
animica rpc call chain_getHead
Both calls hit the same http://127.0.0.1:8545 endpoint your node
exposes. The height should match the latest log line from the previous
step.
Mark this step complete after either command returns the head.
Stop the node
When you’re done, shut the node down cleanly:
animica node down
This stops the compose stack but preserves the chain data under
~/.animica/data/. Running animica node up again resumes from where
it stopped. To wipe the data and start fresh, add --volumes (alias
-v).
Mark this step complete after animica node status reports the node
is no longer running.