oblien/openship: Self-hosted deployment platform

Self-hosted deployment platform

Summary

Openship is an open-source, self-hostable deployment platform with built-in CI/CD, written in TypeScript and released under Apache-2.0. It auto-detects a project's framework from config files, builds and runs the app, then routes traffic and provisions TLS through an OpenResty edge. The same engine is exposed via a desktop app, web dashboard, CLI, and a JavaScript/TypeScript SDK.

What it is useful for

Engineers who want to deploy on their own infrastructure without stitching together separate CI, container host, reverse proxy, and certificate tooling. It supports Node, Python, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Java, .NET, and Docker-based stacks, including existing docker-compose.yml files and monorepos. Supporting services are also covered: managed databases, domains with automatic Let's Encrypt, a CDN with HTTP/3 and Brotli, a built-in SMTP server with DKIM/SPF/DMARC, and scheduled backups.

For teams needing push-to-deploy, the README notes that webhooks and public domains require an always-on self-hosted server or Openship Cloud — the desktop app exposes no public surface. Solo developers can still use the desktop app to ship to a remote VPS or Cloud, with the control plane running only while the GUI is open.

How engineers can use it

The three documented entry points are a desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux), a self-hosted server, or Openship Cloud. For self-hosting, the documented install is:

curl -fsSL https://get.openship.io | sh
openship

The interactive wizard creates the admin, sets the domain, and installs the service. On Linux with Docker, openship up runs in Compose mode (Postgres, Redis, API, dashboard, and an OpenResty edge on :80/:443) and can host apps on the same box. On macOS, Windows, or Linux without Docker, bare mode runs the control plane locally and deploys to a server over SSH or to Cloud. A raw docker/docker-compose.yml is also published for those who prefer no CLI, but that path is Linux-only because the edge container uses host networking, and the API container mounts the host Docker socket.

To ship a project, the documented flow is openship init followed by openship deploy from inside the project directory, with an optional openship.json to override auto-detected commands. An MCP endpoint exposes a subset of the API to AI agents, and the REST API plus the openship npm package (Node.js 22+) provide programmatic control.

Documented caveats: the docs site is described as actively being filled out, the from-source openship-dev build needs Bun and git and is not a production path, and the bundled iRedMail component is GPL-licensed and included in several distributions even when mail is unused.