OpenCel

OpenCel is an open source, self-hosted deployment platform inspired by Vercel.

What OpenCel does today

• Connect a GitHub repository to a project
• Build and deploy on push or pull request
• Create preview URLs per deployment
• Promote a deployment to production
• Stream build/runtime logs in the dashboard
• Manage encrypted environment variables

The current target is single-host Docker Compose for v1.

Monorepo layout

• apps/api - Go API service
• apps/worker - background worker for deployment tasks
• apps/web - Next.js dashboard (shadcn + Tailwind)
• cmd/opencel - OpenCel CLI (install, migrate, and tooling)
• deploy/compose - Docker Compose stacks for local/prod-style installs

Quickstart (development)

Prerequisites:

• Docker Desktop / Docker Engine + Compose plugin
• Go 1.24+
• Node.js 22+

Start infrastructure:

cd deploy/compose/dev
docker compose up -d

Run DB migrations:

go run ./cmd/opencel migrate --dir ./migrations --dsn "postgres://opencel:opencel@localhost:5432/opencel?sslmode=disable"

Run API and worker locally:

export OPENCEL_DSN="postgres://opencel:opencel@localhost:5432/opencel?sslmode=disable"
export OPENCEL_REDIS_ADDR="localhost:6379"
export OPENCEL_BASE_DOMAIN="opencel.localhost"
export OPENCEL_ENV_KEY_B64="$(openssl rand -base64 32)"

go run ./apps/api
go run ./apps/worker

Run the dashboard:

cd apps/web
npm install
npm run dev

Validation commands

Repository checks:

go test ./...

Web checks:

cd apps/web
npm run check

Install (production-style)

Install directly from GitHub (no custom domain required):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErzenXz/opencel/main/install/install.sh | sh

In-repo installer entrypoint:

sh install/install.sh

install/install.sh downloads a released opencel binary and runs opencel install.

Updating OpenCel on a VPS

After installing, update services in-place with:

sudo opencel update

This runs docker compose pull and docker compose up -d in /opt/opencel.

If you also want to refresh the CLI binary itself first:

sudo opencel update --self

If your VPS currently has an older opencel binary that does not include update, run the installer once:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErzenXz/opencel/main/install/install.sh | sh

Then use opencel update for future updates.

If you install from your own GitHub fork, set the release repo:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErzenXz/opencel/main/install/install.sh | OPENCEL_INSTALL_REPO=ErzenXz/opencel sh

Cloudflare Tunnel (recommended for VPS)

If running behind cloudflared, use the installer TLS mode:

opencel install --tls cloudflare

Use the tunnel config example at deploy/cloudflared/config.yml.example and route both the base domain and wildcard preview/prod domains to port 80 on your server.