Docs

Quickstart.

Five minutes from zero to a verifiable handshake. Wraps an existing agent codebase, no infra to stand up first.

Docs vs Spec. Docs explain how to use the SDKs to ship Handshake into your stack. The Spec is the protocol itself, the wire format, the algorithms, what every implementer must agree on. You read Docs once. You cite the Spec.

1. Install the SDK

Reference SDKs are MIT-licensed. Python and TypeScript are stable previews; Go is in early access.

install.shSHELL
# Python
pip install handshake-sdk

# TypeScript / Node
npm install @handshake/sdk

2. Generate a deployer identity

One-time per organization. The deployer key signs every delegation your agents present. Store it in your KMS or HSM in production, see the FAQ on key storage.

provision.pyPYTHON
from handshake import Identity

deployer = Identity.generate(kind="org", domain="acme.com")
deployer.save("./acme-deployer.key")

3. Sign a receipt in five lines

Wrap an agent call. The handshake issues a delegation, the service verifies and executes, and you get back a signed receipt that anyone with the service’s public key can verify offline.

first_handshake.pyPYTHON
from handshake import Identity, Capability

deployer = Identity.load("./acme-deployer.key")
agent = deployer.spawn_agent(model="claude-sonnet-5")

async with agent.handshake_with("https://billing.acme.com/mcp",
    capability="billing.invoices.read",) as session:
    invoices = await session.call("invoices.list")
    assert session.receipt().verify() # Ed25519 over JCS-canonicalized JSON

4. Verify offline

Receipts verify without a Registry round-trip. Hand a receipt to anyone with the issuing service’s DID document and they can confirm what happened.

verify.pyPYTHON
from handshake import Receipt

receipt = Receipt.from_json(open("./receipt.json").read())
assert receipt.verify()
print(receipt.service, receipt.capability, receipt.result_hash)

Where to next

  • SDK reference, language-by-language API surface.
  • Examples, full integrations for MCP, A2A, LangGraph, and OpenAI Agents SDK.
  • FAQ, eight questions developers ask in their first hour.
  • Spec, the protocol itself, normative.