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Getting Started

MESA serves two broad audiences with different on-ramps:

You are… Start here
A scientist from ESIIL, NCEMS, AIIRA, or an allied community Early-Adopter onboarding
A researcher who already has CyVerse / ACCESS-CI accounts Accessing MESA
A developer extending or contributing to MESA Developer Guide

What you will need

  • A CyVerse account — free at cyverse.org. Required for iRODS Data Store access and Discovery Environment apps.
  • An ACCESS-CI allocation if you want to use Jetstream-2 GPUs for self-hosted inference or to spin up your own MCP servers.
  • An MCP-aware AI client — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, Cline, or any other Model Context Protocol client.

Choose your path

  • Explore data with an agent

    Point your AI assistant at the hosted mesa-mcp instance, browse iRODS, annotate with ontologies, and time-travel through metadata history.

    First analysis tutorial →

  • Run your own MCP server

    Install mesa-mcp or irods-mcp-server locally, in a VICE app, or as a hosted service for your group.

    User guide →

  • Contribute to the project

    Clone the component repos, read the architecture docs, send a pull request.

    Developer guide →