Getting started

Install

prism ships to PyPI (the full-featured Python package) and npm (a zero-Python launcher).

# Python (recommended — full features, all providers):
uv tool install prism-verify        # or: pipx install prism-verify

# Zero Python — downloads + SHA256-verifies a prebuilt binary:
npx @mcptoolshop/prism-verify --help

# As a library, with extras:
pip install "prism-verify[all]"     # [anthropic] [openai] [google] [mcp] [http] [all]

Configure a verifier

prism verifies with a model family different from the caller’s, so you need at least one alternate-family provider configured. The always-available option is local Ollama; hosted providers (Anthropic / OpenAI / Google) are used when their API key is set.

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."   # an alt-family verifier for an OpenAI-family caller
# local Ollama needs no key — pin a non-thinking model, e.g. mistral-small:24b

Configure a signing key

Every verification writes a signed receipt, so prism needs a signing key — it refuses to start otherwise (it will not silently sign with a public dev key). v0.4 defaults to Ed25519:

prism keygen --out ~/.prism/signing_key.pem
export PRISM_SIGNING_KEY=~/.prism/signing_key.pem
# or, for local play only:
export PRISM_DEV=1                       # a built-in dev Ed25519 key — INSECURE, local only
# legacy HMAC is still supported:
export PRISM_SIGNING_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)"

Your first verification

prism verify \
  --artifact @myfile.py \
  --intent "Sort a list in O(n log n)" \
  --caller-family openai \
  --provider ollama

prism prints a JSON result with the verdict, per-lens findings, the pairwise correlation matrix, and a signed receipt.

Gate on the verdict in a shell

--gate maps the verdict to an exit code so CI can branch on it (the default, without --gate, stays exit 0 on any successful verification):

prism verify -a @code.py -i "..." --caller-family openai --gate
# exit 0 accept · 10 revise · 20 refuse · 30 escalate

Next: stand it up as an HTTP service, or learn how receipts make a verdict independently verifiable.