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Cowboy’s hosted environments are development networks. State and deployed actor addresses can change after a reset; testnet and mainnet have not launched. Cloud is the only network reachable from the public internet. Outside developers use Cloud (--env cloud) and fund a new wallet with the one-time new-account credit (cowboy credit claim --env cloud: you sign in with Google in a browser, or, with no browser, approve the code it prints on any device). Canyon, Mesa and Bigsky are internal team networks: their RPCs resolve to private addresses and only work from Cowboy’s network.

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RPC and gateway domains

Gateway domains below come from the environment deployment configuration. An address-based URL includes the actor’s lowercase 0x-prefixed, 40-hex-digit address. For example, <0xactor> means that full address, not a registered name. Check the selected RPC’s /chain-info for the network identity and faucet metadata. Faucet availability and limits are environment policy; a listed RPC does not promise an enabled or unlimited faucet. For Canyon:
The faucet funds the selected wallet. Dashboard signup credit is a separate policy with its own limits. For a custom RPC, pass --rpc-url explicitly; a custom endpoint does not imply a public gateway domain. After deployment, use the actor address returned by the CLI and this environment’s URL pattern. CLIs with gateway_url support return the URL from deployment and cowboy actor inspect --json; older CLIs may require constructing it from the verified domain. A URL only serves the routes installed with that actor, and handler traffic requires the actor to have enough CBY.

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Match the runtime before deployment

Project deployment checks the selected RPC’s /actor/runtime-profile/v2. The runtime contract must match, and the CLI’s SDK requirement must use the same family with a min_revision no greater than the network’s SDK support revision. An SDK source digest or compiler version alone does not determine v2 compatibility. Deploy also checks required host features, runtime policy and execution limits. Only when the v2 endpoint returns HTTP 404 does the CLI read /actor/runtime-profile/v1, which requires an exact contract.sdk_digest match. An unavailable, malformed or incompatible v2 response stops deployment; do not work around it by substituting a v1 profile. The node build shown by cowboy status is numbered independently from CLI releases. Inspect the CLI’s actor_toolchain with cowboy version --json and compare it with the network requirements. New public CLI release notes include that metadata when available. If a release does not report it, or no published release matches, ask the network operator for a compatible paired toolset. A latest-release label alone does not establish compatibility, and a newer CLI can require a newer network. Keep the deployment preflight enabled.

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Convert time to blocks

A block count is not a wall-clock duration. For the active network, read /height and two recent /block/<height> responses, then calculate:
Use the returned heights and positive timestamps from the same chain. Sample multiple intervals, and measure again after a reset or configuration change. Do not substitute a guessed 3-second interval. At 1 second per block, an hour is about 3,600 blocks, a day 86,400, and a week 604,800. State the measured assumption when proposing a timer. For “every Monday,” also align the first firing with the requested weekday and timezone. If timing cannot be measured, leave the schedule unconfigured rather than silently choosing a period.