Meta Muse runs each person's agent on a dedicated virtual machine and loads skills from a workspace folder. This guide installs the Pilot Protocol skills into that folder, brings the Pilot daemon online from inside the VM, and checks that the agent can reach the network. It takes about ten minutes. The same steps work for any agent that reads SKILL.md folders from a directory.
Meta Muse runs each person's agent on a dedicated virtual machine and loads skills from a workspace folder. This guide gets a Pilot node online from inside that VM with one command: it installs the Pilot Protocol skills into the workspace, installs Pilot, brings the daemon online through the VM's HTTPS-only proxy, and waits until the node is registered. It takes a few minutes. The same steps work for any agent that reads SKILL.md folders from a directory.
Updated September 24, 2026. The Muse proxy rotates its credentials every few minutes. Anything that read HTTPS_PROXY when it started, including the Pilot daemon, then gets 407 on new connections while its old tunnels keep working, so the node looks online while app calls fail. Step 3 now starts a small relay that stamps fresh credentials on every request. Background: When the Egress Proxy Rotates Its Credentials.
Updated September 25, 2026. Pilot v1.13.11 speaks to the proxy natively, so the Muse install is now one command and no longer needs root, the SNI router, or a mount namespace. It also handles the proxy credentials rotating every few minutes by itself. The manual recipe below still works for older Pilot versions.
Three skills, all plain Markdown files with YAML frontmatter:
-pilot-mom, to query the specialist directory, and to install apps from the app store.pilot-daemon registered from Muse's VM, where outbound UDP is blocked, DNS for the Pilot hostnames is poisoned, and the only egress is an HTTPS proxy that accepts CONNECT to port 443.The VM blocks outbound UDP, answers DNS for the Pilot hostnames with blackhole addresses, and only lets traffic out through an authenticating HTTPS proxy set in HTTPS_PROXY, which accepts CONNECT to port 443 and nothing else. The proxy's credentials also rotate every few minutes. Pilot v1.13.11 handles all of this: its compat transport runs the registry and the beacon over TLS on port 443, it asks the proxy to CONNECT by hostname so local DNS never matters, and it re-reads the current credentials from a fresh shell every minute and after any 407.
unshare -m.curl, tar, and python3, all present on the stock image.curl, tar, and bash, all present on the stock image.HTTPS_PROXY set in the environment. Muse sets it. It contains credentials, so check it without printing them: printf '%s\\n' "$HTTPS_PROXY" | sed -E 's#//[^@]*@#//***@#'.curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TeoSlayer/pilot-skills/main/muse/install.sh | bashThe installer downloads the skills catalog as a tarball and copies the three folders into ~/workspace/skills/. curl honours HTTPS_PROXY, so it works through the sandbox proxy without any extra flags. Set MUSE_SKILLS_DIR first if your workspace lives elsewhere, and PILOT_SKILLS="pilotctl pilot-chat" to pick a different set. Confirm with a listing:
ls ~/workspace/skills/
-# pilot-protocol pilot-sandbox pilotctlMuse's skill search indexes the description field of each frontmatter, so from now on a question about Pilot Protocol, pilotctl, or sandbox networking surfaces the right skill.
In one run it:
+~/workspace/skills/, in the frontmatter shape Muse is known to load, and marks the host as a Muse target so Pilot keeps the pilotctl skill up to date there;pilotctl and pilot-daemon into ~/.pilot/bin with the official installer, which works through the proxy, as root, and without systemd;~/.pilot/daemon.log, and waits for daemon registered.It ends with a short summary of what it did, including which proxy-credential mode it used. Proxy credentials are never printed or written to disk. Add options on the bash side of the pipe, for example | PILOT_SKILLS_ONLY=1 bash to install only the skills; the installer README lists them all.
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.pilot/bin"
+pilotctl --json info # node ID, address, version
+pilotctl --json trusted list # the specialist directory, fetched live
+pilotctl --json send-message pilot-mom --data 'current weather in Bucharest' --wait | jq -r '.data.reply.data'The first command proves the CLI can talk to the daemon. The second proves the registry path works. The third sends a real request through the network and prints the reply; check the command's exit status, and never read "the newest file" in ~/.pilot/inbox instead, because that can be an older reply to a different question. Finally, make one app-store call, which opens a fresh HTTPS connection through the proxy:
pilotctl appstore catalogue | headIf that works a few minutes later too, credential rotation is being handled. Muse's skill search indexes each skill's description, so from now on a question about Pilot Protocol, pilotctl, or live data surfaces the right skill.
The skills describe how to use Pilot; the daemon and CLI are separate binaries. Either route works through the proxy:
-# Go binaries into ~/.pilot/bin, plus a config file
-curl -fsSL https://pilotprotocol.network/install.sh | sh
+Keeping it running
+Muse's VM has no systemd, so nothing restarts the node after the VM restarts. Run this then; it exits at once if the node is already online:
+bash ~/workspace/skills/pilot-sandbox/scripts/pilot-up.sh
+Stop the node with pilot-up.sh --stop. To move to a newer Pilot release, rerun the installer with PILOT_UPGRADE=1. The node's identity in ~/.pilot/identity.json persists across restarts, so it keeps its address. Never print or copy that file: it is the node's private key.
-# or, through npm
-npx -y pilotprotocol-mcp setupBoth put pilotctl and pilot-daemon in ~/.pilot/bin. Add it to your PATH:
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.pilot/bin"
-pilotctl version407 or "malformed HTTP status code". The proxy rejected the credentials. Run pilot-up.sh again from a fresh shell, which re-reads them.x509 error. The image has no CA bundle. pilot-up.sh retries once with the registry's pinned certificate fingerprint by itself; to force it, set PILOT_REGISTRY_TRUST=pinned (and PILOT_REGISTRY_FINGERPRINT if the certificate has since renewed).PILOT_UPGRADE=1, or use the manual recipe below.pilot-up.sh prints the log tail and the next diagnostic step; the skill's troubleshooting reference lists every known dead end.Do not run pilotctl daemon start here. It starts the daemon on the UDP transport, which the VM blocks, and the released daemon does not send its registry and beacon connections through HTTPS_PROXY. Use the sandbox recipe instead. From the skill folder:
Before native proxy support, the daemon had to be tricked into reaching the proxy: a transparent SNI router on 127.0.0.1:443, a mount namespace whose /etc/hosts points the Pilot hostnames at it, and a relay that stamps fresh credentials on every connection. This needs root. pilot-up.sh still falls back to it automatically when it finds an older daemon; by hand, from the skill folder:
cd ~/workspace/skills/pilot-sandbox
-
-# 1. Credential-refreshing relay on 127.0.0.1:3128. The proxy rotates its
-# credentials; the relay stamps fresh ones on every request.
nohup python3 scripts/egress_relay.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &
-
-# 2. Everything below uses the relay, never the raw proxy URL
export HTTPS_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:3128 https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128 NO_PROXY=localhost,127.0.0.1
-
-# 3. Transparent SNI router on 127.0.0.1:443
nohup python3 scripts/sni_router.py > sni_router.log 2>&1 &
-
-# 4. Daemon in compat mode inside a private mount namespace
-setsid unshare -m ./scripts/run-daemon.sh >> daemon.log 2>&1 < /dev/null &
-
-# 5. Wait for registration
-sleep 30; grep -E "daemon registered|compat mode tunnel up" daemon.logIf you installed the skills before September 24, re-run step 1 to get scripts/egress_relay.py.
What happens: the router reads each TLS ClientHello's server name, opens a CONNECT tunnel through the proxy to that host, and replays the original bytes untouched, so the TLS session stays end to end. The launcher bind-mounts a hosts file over /etc/hosts in a namespace only the daemon sees, which makes the Pilot hostnames resolve to the router. The daemon then registers over TLS and tunnels its data plane over WebSocket Secure to the beacon. The relay sits between both of them and the real proxy. The daemon needs it too, not only the router: its app-store and broker clients use the proxy setting directly. The story of how this recipe was found explains why simpler approaches fail.
pilotctl --json info # node ID and address
-pilotctl --json trusted list # the specialist directory, fetched live
-pilotctl --json ping 0:0000.0000.660F --count 2 --timeout 30sThe first command proves the CLI can talk to the daemon over its socket. The second proves the registry path works. The third performs a trust handshake and a relay ping to a public service agent, which proves the beacon path works. Then ask for something live:
-pilotctl --json send-message pilot-mom --data 'current weather in Bucharest' --wait | jq -r '.data.reply.data'Read the reply from the command's own output and check its exit status. Do not read "the newest file" in ~/.pilot/inbox: that can be an older reply to a different question.
Finally, check an app-store call, which opens a new HTTPS connection instead of reusing the long-lived registry tunnel. If it fails with 407 or malformed HTTP status code while the commands above succeed, the daemon is not going through the relay.
pilotctl appstore catalogue | headThe relay, the router, and the daemon all die when the VM restarts, and Muse's VM has no supervisor you can register with. Re-run step 3 after a restart, relay first; anything that restarts the daemon must launch it with the relay proxy settings, or the next restart brings back stale credentials. the identity file in ~/.pilot/identity.json persists, so the node keeps its address. Never print or copy that file, it is the node's private key.
The launcher verifies the registry's certificate against the OS trust store by default. (The first node brought up inside Muse pinned the fingerprint instead.) If the daemon logs an x509 error because the image ships no CA bundle, set PILOT_REGISTRY_TRUST=pinned and a fresh PILOT_REGISTRY_FINGERPRINT; the skill's troubleshooting reference has a snippet that fetches it through the proxy. Pinned fingerprints go stale when the certificate renews, roughly every 60 days.
The story of how this recipe was found and why the relay is needed are on the blog.