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midplane local runs the gateway with no Midplane Cloud: each database’s policy is in midplane.yaml, and tokens are signed with a key you make. Use it offline, to try Midplane (quickstart), or when you don’t want a hosted control plane. What it doesn’t have: approvals (a held write is refused, with a pointer to linking the gateway), a dashboard, and taint shared between instances (each gateway keeps taint in its audit file).

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Keys and tokens

writes midplane-signing-key.json (private: keep it secret, it mints tokens) and midplane-verify-key.json (public: auth.public_key_file names it). It won’t overwrite either.
prints a token for one person (--sub), for one database or all of them, read by default, valid for an hour by default. Each token is its own grant: taint recorded for it doesn’t follow its person to another token. A token whose id is in auth.revoked_token_ids is refused.

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Serving

Over HTTP, agents send the token as Authorization: Bearer <token>:
Over stdio, the MCP client starts the gateway itself and passes the token in MIDPLANE_TOKEN; it is verified at start and again on every call, so an expired token stops working without a restart. Logs go to stderr, since stdout carries MCP. Each session starts a gateway of its own; with one config they share its audit file, as one chain, and the taint it keeps. Stdio keeps an agent out only if it has no shell or file access: the gateway’s secrets (the DSN, the salt, the token) sit in the agent’s MCP config, and the gateway runs as the agent’s own user. Beyond a demo, serve over HTTP, with the gateway running as another user or on another host.

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What an agent can call

Four tools: query (one statement, with an optional intent, the agent’s reason), list_tables, describe_table, and check_approval (which, in local mode, says approvals need a linked gateway). Tested by apps/gateway/test/cli.e2e.test.ts (keygen, token, stdio) and apps/gateway/test/gateway.e2e.test.ts (local mode end to end).