Windlass

Windlass is a lightweight, self-hosted Docker Compose control plane. It provides projects, Git deployments, domains with HTTPS, logs, terminals, metrics, backups, templates, users, and updates without replacing Docker Compose with a proprietary runtime.

Stop Windlass and your sites keep serving. The containers are ordinary Compose containers with a restart policy, and Caddy keeps the routes it already has. There is nothing to migrate off if you change your mind: see life without the panel.

curl -fsSL https://get.windlass.run | sudo sh

More screens in docs/screenshots, and the full guides at windlass.run.

Source-of-truth model

Application configuration lives under the projects directory:

<projects>/<name>/
├── compose.yaml       # services, images, ports, volumes, networks, env references, limits
├── .env               # optional standard dotenv file; mode 0600
└── .windlass.json     # source repository, branch, auto-deploy, and domains

Windlass executes the real docker compose CLI in that directory. Hand-editing the files and running docker compose up -d is supported. The Files and Environment screens read the same files, and Scan stacks directory rebuilds the SQLite project/domain index.

SQLite is not application configuration. It contains platform state such as users, sessions, audit entries, deployment history, jobs, backup records, settings, encrypted credentials, and rebuildable project/domain/environment indexes. Removing SQLite does not stop running containers; filesystem scanning restores the application index, but platform history and accounts require a platform backup.

Runtime model

• One Go process serves the API and embedded React frontend.
• Docker Compose performs deployments.
• Caddy owns routing and certificates. Windlass changes only its tagged route objects.
• A loopback-only Docker socket proxy exposes the API families Compose needs. The windlass system user is not a member of the docker group.
• No Redis, Kubernetes, Swarm, Prometheus, or separate job service is required.
• CI enforces an idle RSS budget below 40 MiB for the Go process.

Stopping or removing Windlass does not stop deployed applications. See Life without the panel.

Main features

• Manual, Git, webhook, template, and rollback deployments
• Crash-resumable deployment jobs and replayable deployment events
• Caddy application domains and a Settings-managed HTTPS domain for the panel itself
• Raw file editing plus individual or bulk-paste environment variable editing
• Compose-native CPU/memory limit visibility and application readiness checks
• Container logs, browser terminal, host/container metrics, and image cleanup
• Local and S3-compatible backups with optional schedules
• Local users, roles, TOTP, and optional OAuth configuration
• Optional external-process plugins

Application readiness is configured with ordinary Compose labels:

services:
  web:
    labels:
      windlass.health.url: https://app.example.com/health
      windlass.health.status: "200"
      windlass.health.contains: ready
      windlass.health.stability_seconds: "10"

Install

curl -fsSL https://get.windlass.run | sudo sh

Claim the instance using the one-time token in journalctl -u windlass, then open Settings → Panel domain after pointing a DNS record at the server. Caddy obtains and renews the panel certificate automatically.

See Installation for systemd, container, configuration, update, and uninstall details.

Development and verification

go test ./...
go vet ./...
cd web && npm ci && npm run build
go test -tags integration ./...   # Linux with Docker and Caddy

The production binary embeds web/dist:

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -trimpath -tags embedweb ./cmd/windlass

License

Apache-2.0