satd Operator Manual

satd is a Bitcoin Core-compatible full node written in Rust, built from the ground up to make running a node easier, safer, and more transparent for the people who actually operate infrastructure — home-server and Raspberry Pi self-custodians, downstream packagers (Umbrel, Start9, RaspiBlitz, MyNode), and integrators building wallets, Lightning nodes, and explorers on top of a node they control.

This manual is the operator-, integrator-, and packager-facing reference. It catalogs every shipped operator surface: observability and metrics, configuration and tuning, live reload, integrator APIs, the terminal UI, the native protocol surfaces (Esplora / Electrum / BIP 157-158), and the packaging contract.

One process, one store. The defining architectural choice is that every API service — JSON-RPC, Esplora, Electrum, BIP 157/158 filters, the streaming APIs, MCP — is a query layer over the same RocksDB and chainstate the node itself uses, updated atomically inside block connection. There is no second process and no second copy of the data: running satd is not bitcoind + electrs + an Esplora indexer + exporters glued together, but a single daemon where all surfaces share the node's storage. This eliminates the parallel block re-scan and the reorg-window race where an external indexer's view lags the node, so every surface reads a single, tip-consistent store. Serving Electrum, Esplora, getrawtransaction, and BIP 158 from one node means satd's aggregate on-disk index is larger than a standalone external index — you trade disk for consistency and single-process operation. See Disk Footprint & Indices for the byte-level accounting, and API Scaling & Runtimes for the scale-out trade-off.

How this manual is organized

• Operating — the day-to-day surfaces: observability and metrics, configuration, tuning, and live reload, initial block download and AssumeUTXO fast sync, API scaling and the two-runtime model, authentication and authorization (Core-compatible credentials plus the unified bearer-token layer), the integrator APIs, and the sat-tui terminal dashboard.
• Protocol Surfaces — the Esplora REST API and Electrum protocol references, the streaming consumption API, the MCP server, and the architecture behind satd's native, shared-chainstate protocol servers (the headline differentiator over the bitcoind + electrs status quo).
• Packaging & Deployment — the authoritative packaging contract for downstream distributions: file layout, signals, ports, the release/signing pipeline, and reproducible builds.
• Reference — the Configuration Flag Reference: every recognized config key, its default, reload disposition, and whether it is Bitcoin Core-compatible or a satd extension.

Related documents (in the repository)

These live at the repository root rather than in this manual:

• CORE_DIFFERENCES.md — the catalog of intentional deviations from Bitcoin Core.
• STABILITY_POLICY.md — the tiered stability contract and deprecation policy.
• SECURITY.md — signing keys, verification commands, and vulnerability reporting.
• MANIFESTO.md — node sovereignty, the monoculture risk, and the conservative BIP policy.
• ROADMAP.md — upcoming operator features and research areas not yet shipped.
• The streaming-consumption API is specified in docs/api/streaming.md (a forward-looking protocol spec, distinct from this shipped-surface manual).