Docker primer: CoPaw + Talon

Run Talon as a gateway in front of your LLM provider. CoPaw sends every chat request to Talon; Talon resolves the agent from the presented key, scans for PII, enforces cost and model limits, forwards to the provider, and writes an audit record.

What you need

• Base URL in CoPaw: http://localhost:8080/v1/proxy/openai/v1 (or http://<talon-host>:8080/v1/proxy/openai/v1).
• API Key in CoPaw: the primer agent's Talon agent key — the value minted into the vault secret referenced by agent.key.secret_name in this directory's agent.talon.yaml (talon secrets set gateway-copaw-primer-talon-key "$(openssl rand -hex 24)"). Not your real OpenAI/DashScope key.

Talon stores the real provider key in its vault; CoPaw only ever holds the agent key, which resolves to exactly one agent and its tenant.

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose
• Image build: This primer builds the Talon image from the repo root (context: ../..). You need a clone of the Talon repo. Alternatively, use a pre-built image if available (e.g. ghcr.io/dativo-io/talon:latest) and set image: ghcr.io/dativo-io/talon:latest in docker-compose.yaml instead of the build block.
• Your real OpenAI (or DashScope) API key for .env

Quick start

1. Copy env and set your provider key

   cd docs/guides/copaw-talon-primer
   cp .env.example .env
   # Edit .env: OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key

2. Build and run Talon

   chmod +x entrypoint.sh
   docker compose build
   docker compose up -d

3. Configure CoPaw

   In CoPaw Console (Settings → Models) or via env:

   • Base URL: http://localhost:8080/v1/proxy/openai/v1
   • API Key: the agent key minted for gateway-copaw-primer-talon-key

4. Verify

   talon audit list --agent gateway-copaw-primer (the agent.name from agent.talon.yaml is the evidence agent_id) and the dashboard CoPaw Agents tab.

See CoPaw integration for full steps and troubleshooting.

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You're done

You now have CoPaw + Talon running in Docker. Talon is the gateway in front of your LLM provider; every request is logged, policy-checked, and recorded.

Next steps:

I want to…	Doc
Cap cost or restrict models	How to cap daily spend per team or application
Run CoPaw + Talon without Docker	How to govern CoPaw with Talon
Export evidence for auditors	How to export evidence for auditors
Add another app through the gateway	Add Talon to your existing app