Boat House

Open-source infrastructure for small software built with AI agents.

Boat House gives a tool a live HTTPS address, sign-in, a database, persistent files, and sharing by email. Editors use the app in a browser. Developers with Admin access can use their own agents to fetch its source and publish versioned updates to the same address.

The software is licensed under Apache 2.0. You can run it on your own infrastructure or use Boat House managed hosting.

	Self-host	Managed hosting
Software	Free under Apache 2.0	Same open-source foundation
Infrastructure and operations	You provide and maintain them	Boat House operates them
Price	Your server, domain and provider costs	$10 per organization per month for up to five lightweight tools; domain purchases are separate
Getting started	Self-hosting guide	Sign up, confirm email, copy the connection into your agent

What is included

• A FastAPI control plane and Caddy HTTPS gateway.
• Account sign-in, email invitations, per-tool Viewer / Editor / Admin access, and signed identity passed to apps.
• Per-tool PostgreSQL databases, persistent file volumes, container resource limits, and saved source releases.
• Deployment, source checkout, updates, rollback, export, and backup/restore commands.
• The bh CLI, an MCP endpoint, and an agent skill for Claude Code, Codex and other compatible agents.
• Optional email, domain registration, and prepaid billing integrations. Self-hosters configure their own providers; metering can be disabled.

Admin is full control of a tool, including its source, secrets, sharing and deletion. Software collaboration uses source checkout and versioned publication. App code enforces its own record-level access rules.

Start with managed hosting

Create an account at boathousecloud.com, confirm your email, then choose Copy connection and paste the message into your coding agent. Ask it to put a tool online or share it by email. Add credit before deploying. No separate hosting, database or sign-in project is needed.

Install the agent skill in Cursor, Codex or Windsurf:

npx skills add allenzhangyiteng/boathouse-skills

For Claude Code, add /plugin marketplace add allenzhangyiteng/boathouse-skills, then /plugin install boathouse@boathouse. See the skill and plugin repository and installation guide.

The CLI can create a working app before you connect an account:

bh init my-app --template team
cd my-app
python3 app.py --local

Use --template static for an HTML website. boathouse is an alias installed alongside bh when available. The starter format is ordinary source plus boathouse.json; no proprietary runtime is needed. See the runnable guides, llms.txt and complete agent docs.

Run your own installation

See the self-hosting guide for a Linux host with Docker, DNS and HTTPS. The public release contains no accounts, credentials, database snapshots, hosted customer tools or production configuration. All examples use placeholders; generate your own secrets.

This is infrastructure for trusted teams and trusted app builders. The control plane manages the host Docker daemon. Resource limits and container networks do not make it a secure sandbox for hostile code. Read the security model before exposing an installation.

Development

Python 3.12 is used by the container image. In a virtual environment:

python -m pip install -r control/requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
python -m pytest -q
python scripts/check_public_tree.py

Tests create temporary local state and use fake providers. Do not point tests at production credentials or state. CI runs the tests, publication hygiene checks, and Gitleaks.

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
control/app/	API, account UI, gateway authorization, deployment and providers
control/site/	Public-site source and static assets
cli/bh	Standard-library Python CLI
skill/boathouse/	Agent instructions
caddy/, docker-compose.yml	Gateway and services
deploy/	Host installation, synchronization and backup scripts
examples/hello/	Minimal app that checks signed identity
tests/	Regression tests with synthetic data

Contributions are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md. Report vulnerabilities using SECURITY.md.