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Wire up your first peer in five minutes

August 31, 2026 · by lvndry

In five minutes you’ll have two agents on your machine asking each other questions, with a tier that caps what the asking side is allowed to learn, enforced so strictly there’s no tool for it to reach past.

You only need Jazz installed. We’ll run two agents on one machine by giving each its own data directory, so they never see each other’s state.

1. Create two agents

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-alice agent create   # name it "alice"
jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-bob   agent create   # name it "bob"

--data-dir points a single jazz binary at its own agents, config, and credentials. That’s how one machine runs two fully separate setups.

2. Bob serves

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-bob daemon --serve-peers bob --port 4748

Leave that running in its own terminal. Loopback by default, so nothing outside this machine can reach it.

3. Bob invites Alice

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-bob peers invite create alice --port 4748 --disclosure internal --expires 1h

--disclosure internal is the ceiling: the most Alice’s agent may ever learn from Bob’s, set by Bob, before Alice does anything. The command prints a link. Send it to Alice out of band (a chat message, not a commit).

You never typed a token. The link carries a one-time secret; the real credential is minted by Bob’s daemon at the moment Alice accepts, and handed to her then. A leaked link is spent, not a standing key.

4. Alice accepts

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-alice peers invite accept "<the link bob sent>"

She sees who invited her, at what endpoint, and what tier. Confirms once.

5. Give Alice the asking tool

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-alice agent edit alice   # tick ask_peer

ask_peer only appears once a peer exists. A tool the model can see is a tool it will try.

6. Ask

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-alice run --agent alice "ask bob's agent what the status of deploy #4821 is"

internal admits read-only tools like git and ls, so you get a real answer back, attributed and quoted as something Bob’s agent said, not as a fact Alice’s agent should obey.

7. Watch a tier refuse

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-alice run --agent alice "ask bob's agent to read his ~/.bashrc and summarize it"

Bob’s agent says it cannot. This is not it deciding to be unhelpful, and it is not that Bob’s agent can’t read files in general. It is the internal tier Bob granted Alice: that tier does not admit read_file, so the tool was never put into this run’s toolset. There is no prompt to argue with, nothing to approve, and nothing for a persuasive question to reach.

8. Read the ledger, both sides

jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-bob   peers log   # what Bob was asked, and what he said
jazz --data-dir /tmp/jazz-alice peers log   # what Alice asked, and what came back

The refused request shows up too, with the actual reply. That’s the point of logging the answer and not just the outcome.

Next

peer setup guide.

The showcase shows what else this unlocks; the essay is the why.