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+# Run propolis-standalone with crucible disks
+
+This document serves as an overview for running propolis-standalone using
+crucible disks.
+
+## Background: Why standalone?
+
+In the product, the userspace VMM component for instances is
+[propolis-server](https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis/tree/master/bin/propolis-server),
+which exposes API endpoints for the rest of the control plane to manage
+instances. One can run propolis-server in isolation, such as for development,
+and interact with its endpoints using a
+client such as the [propolis
+CLI](https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis/tree/master/bin/propolis-cli).
+
+
+The
+[standalone](https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis/tree/master/bin/propolis-standalone#propolis-standalone)
+version of propolis is useful development tool to a VM up and running quickly
+without having to hit any API endpoints. It takes an input a single TOML file,
+sets up a unix domain socket that is connected to a VM's uart, and starts the
+guests when the user connects to the socket. It also cleans up the VM gracefully
+when the user sends CTRL+C to the running `propolis-standalone` program.
+
+Beyond these differences, there are some differences in the state machine
+related to the instance lifecycle as well as the emulation.
+
+TODO: flesh out more of these differences, and maybe capture them in a
+higher-level README.
+
+## Requirements
+
+TODO: document the following
+
+- how to build each of propolis and crucible
+- assuming we are running on bench gimlets, which files to copy
+
+
+## Instructions
+