Selfhost AI — Self-Hosted AI Automation Platform

Deploy 30+ AI and automation tools with a single command. This open-source Docker Compose template creates a complete self-hosted environment with n8n (workflow automation), Flowise (AI agents), Ollama (local LLMs), vector databases (Qdrant, Weaviate), RAG engines, Supabase, monitoring stack, and more — all pre-configured behind Caddy reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS. Plus, optionally import 300+ community workflows during setup!

Key Features
Why This Setup?
What's Included
Installation
Quick Start and Usage
Upgrading
Quick Commands
Troubleshooting
License

Key Features

Private AI Homelab — Run LLMs locally with Ollama, keep your data on your own servers
ChatGPT Alternative — Open WebUI provides a familiar chat interface for local AI models
Workflow Automation — n8n with 400+ integrations, scalable queue-based architecture
AI Agents & RAG — Flowise, Dify, LangChain, vector databases (Qdrant, Weaviate)
One Command Install — Interactive wizard, automatic secrets, zero manual configuration
Auto HTTPS — Caddy reverse proxy with automatic Let's Encrypt certificates
Built-in Monitoring — Grafana + Prometheus stack included
Production Ready — Scalable workers, health checks, proper service dependencies
Free & Open Source — No vendor lock-in, Apache 2.0 license

Why This Setup?

This installer helps you create your own powerful, private AI workshop. Imagine having a suite of tools at your fingertips to:

Automate repetitive tasks.
Build smart assistants tailored to your needs.
Analyze information and gain insights.
Generate creative content.

This setup provides a comprehensive suite of cutting-edge services, all pre-configured to work together. Key advantages include:

Rich Toolset: Get a curated collection of powerful open-source tools for AI development, automation, and monitoring, all in one place.
Scalable n8n Performance: n8n runs in queue mode by default, leveraging Redis for task management and Postgres for data storage. You can dynamically specify the number of n8n workers and task runners during installation, allowing for robust parallel processing of your workflows to handle demanding loads.
Full Control: All of this is hosted by you, giving you full control over your data, operations, and how resources are allocated.

What's Included

✅ Caddy, Postgres, and Redis - Core services for web proxy, database, and caching, which are always included.

The installer also makes the following powerful open-source tools available for you to select and deploy via an interactive wizard during setup:

✅ Appsmith - An open-source low-code platform for building internal tools, dashboards, and admin panels with a drag-and-drop UI builder.

✅ n8n - A low-code platform with over 400 integrations and advanced AI components to automate workflows.

✅ ComfyUI - A powerful, node-based UI for Stable Diffusion workflows. Build and run image-generation pipelines visually, with support for custom nodes and extensions.

✅ Crawl4ai - A flexible web crawler designed for AI, enabling you to extract data from websites for your projects.

✅ Docling - Universal document converter that transforms PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, HTML, and images into clean Markdown or JSON. Features advanced PDF parsing, OCR support, and a REST API with optional web UI. Perfect for document processing in n8n workflows.

✅ Dify - An open-source AI application development platform that provides comprehensive LLMOps capabilities, including workflow management, prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, and AI agent orchestration. Perfect for building production-ready AI applications.

✅ Flowise - A no-code/low-code AI agent builder that complements n8n perfectly, allowing you to create sophisticated AI applications with ease.

✅ Gost - Versatile HTTP/HTTPS proxy for routing AI service outbound traffic through a central proxy point

✅ Gotenberg - A stateless API for converting HTML, Markdown, Word, Excel, and other documents to PDF, PNG, or JPEG. Available only within the Docker network for internal use by n8n workflows and other services.

✅ Grafana - An open-source platform for visualizing monitoring data, helping you understand system performance at a glance.

✅ InvokeAI - A professional creative engine for Stable Diffusion with a polished web UI, node-based workflow editor, inpainting/outpainting, and a REST API. Choose NVIDIA, AMD, or CPU hardware during install; models and outputs are stored in ./invokeai on the host.

✅ Langfuse - An open-source platform to help you observe and understand how your AI agents are performing, making it easier to debug and improve them.

✅ Letta - An open-source agent server and SDK that can be connected to various LLM API backends (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, etc.), enabling you to build and manage AI agents.

✅ LightRAG - A simple and fast graph-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation system with automatic knowledge graph extraction, dual-level retrieval mechanisms, and incremental updates. Supports multiple storage backends (PostgreSQL, Neo4j, JSON) and embedding models.

✅ LibreTranslate - Self-hosted translation API (50+ languages).

✅ Neo4j - A graph database management system that allows you to model, store, and query data as a network of nodes and relationships.

✅ NocoDB - An open source Airtable alternative that turns any database into a smart spreadsheet with a no-code interface for building collaborative apps.

✅ Ollama - Run Llama 3, Mistral, Gemma, and other large language models locally. Optionally expose its API externally through Caddy under OLLAMA_HOSTNAME, protected by a generated Bearer token.

✅ Open WebUI - A user-friendly, ChatGPT-like interface to interact privately with your AI models and n8n agents.

✅ PaddleOCR - A CPU-ready OCR API powered by PaddleX Basic Serving.

✅ Portainer - A lightweight, secure web UI to manage your Docker environment (containers, images, volumes, networks) with ease.

✅ Databasus - Database backups & monitoring with a self-hosted UI.

✅ Postiz - An open-source social media scheduling and publishing platform.

✅ Prometheus - An open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit to keep an eye on system health.

✅ Qdrant - A high-performance open-source vector store, specialized for AI. While Supabase also offers vector capabilities, Qdrant is included for its speed, making it ideal for demanding AI tasks.

✅ RAGApp - Open-source application to build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) assistants over your data. Provides a web UI for chat and an HTTP API for integration with your workflows.

✅ RAGFlow - An open-source RAG engine based on deep document understanding with Elasticsearch backend, providing truthful question-answering capabilities with well-founded citations from complex formatted data.

✅ SearXNG - A free, open-source internet metasearch engine. It aggregates results from numerous search services without tracking or profiling you, ensuring your privacy.

✅ Supabase - An open-source alternative to Firebase, providing database storage, user authentication, and more. It's a popular choice for AI applications.

✅ Uptime Kuma - Self-hosted uptime monitoring tool with notifications

✅ WAHA - WhatsApp HTTP API (REST API) that you can configure in a click! 3 engines: WEBJS (browser based), NOWEB (websocket nodejs), GOWS (websocket go).

✅ Weaviate - An open-source AI-native vector database with a focus on scalability and ease of use. It can be used for RAG, hybrid search, and more.

Included Community Workflows

Get started quickly with a vast library of pre-built automations (optional import during setup)! This collection includes over 300 workflows covering a wide range of use cases:

🚦 What's inside?

AI Agents & Chatbots: RAG, LLM, LangChain, Ollama, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and more
Gmail & Outlook: Smart labeling, auto-replies, PDF handling, and email-to-Notion
HR, E-commerce, IT, Security, Research, and more!
Notion, Airtable, Google Sheets: Data sync, AI summaries, knowledge bases
PDF, Image, Audio, Video: Extraction, summarization, captioning, speech-to-text
Slack, Mattermost: Ticketing, feedback analysis, notifications
Social Media: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube, TikTok automations
Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord: Bots, notifications, voice, and image workflows
WordPress, WooCommerce: AI content, chatbots, auto-tagging

Installation

Prerequisites before Installation

Domain Name: You need a registered domain name (e.g., yourdomain.com).
DNS Configuration: Before running the installation script, you must configure DNS A-record for your domain, pointing to the public IP address of the server where you'll install this system. Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain:
- Wildcard Record: A *.yourdomain.com -> YOUR_SERVER_IP
VPS (Virtual Private Server): A dedicated VPS with a public IP address is required. Home servers, shared hosting, or localhost setups are not supported.
- Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, 64-bit
- For a minimal setup with n8n, Monitoring, Databasus and Portainer: 4 GB Memory / 2 CPU Cores / 40 GB Disk Space
- For running all available services: at least 20 GB Memory / 4 CPU Cores / 60 GB Disk Space

Running the Install

The recommended way to install is using the provided main installation script.

Connect to your server via SSH.

Run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/kossakovsky/selfhost-ai && cd selfhost-ai && sudo bash ./scripts/install.sh

This single command automates the entire setup process, including:

Preparing your system (updates, firewall configuration, and basic security enhancements like brute-force protection).
Installing Docker and Docker Compose (tools for running applications in isolated environments).
Generating a configuration file (.env) with necessary secrets and your domain settings.
Launching all the services.

During the installation, the script will prompt you for:

Your primary domain name (Required, e.g., yourdomain.com). This is the domain for which you've configured the wildcard DNS record.
Your email address (Required, used for service logins like Flowise, Supabase dashboard, Grafana, and for SSL certificate registration with Let's Encrypt).
An optional OpenAI API key (Not required. If provided, it can be used by Supabase AI features and Crawl4ai. Press Enter to skip).
Whether you want to import ~300 ready-made n8n community workflows (y/n, Optional. This can take 20-30 minutes, depending on your server and network speed).
The number of n8n workers you want to run (Required, e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4. This determines how many workflows can be processed in parallel. Each worker automatically gets its own dedicated task runner sidecar for executing Code nodes. Defaults to 1 if not specified).
A Service Selection Wizard will then appear, allowing you to choose which of the available services (like Flowise, Supabase, Qdrant, Open WebUI, etc.) you want to deploy. Core services (Caddy, Postgres, Redis) will be set up to support your selections.

Upon successful completion, the script will display a summary report. This report contains the access URLs and credentials for the deployed services. Save this information in a safe place!

Quick Start and Usage

After successful installation, your services are up and running! Here's how to get started:

Access Your Services: The installation script provided a summary report with all access URLs and credentials. Please refer to that report. The main services will be available at the following addresses (replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain):
- n8n: n8n.yourdomain.com (Log in with the email address you provided during installation and the initial password from the summary report. You may be prompted to change this password on first login.)
- Appsmith: appsmith.yourdomain.com (Low-code app builder)
- ComfyUI: comfyui.yourdomain.com (Node-based Stable Diffusion UI)
- Databasus: databasus.yourdomain.com
- Dify: dify.yourdomain.com (AI application development platform with comprehensive LLMOps capabilities)
- Docling: docling.yourdomain.com (Universal document converter with REST API; web UI available at /ui)
- Flowise: flowise.yourdomain.com (Log in with the email address you provided during installation and the initial password from the summary report.)
- Grafana: grafana.yourdomain.com
- InvokeAI: invokeai.yourdomain.com (Stable Diffusion studio; download a model via the Model Manager on first visit)
- Langfuse: langfuse.yourdomain.com
- Letta: letta.yourdomain.com
- LibreTranslate: translate.yourdomain.com
- LightRAG: lightrag.yourdomain.com
- Neo4j: neo4j.yourdomain.com
- NocoDB: nocodb.yourdomain.com
- Ollama: ollama.yourdomain.com (Optional local-LLM API; every request must send Authorization: Bearer <OLLAMA_CADDY_API_TOKEN>. A leaked token grants full control — including pulling/deleting models — not just inference.)
- Open WebUI: webui.yourdomain.com
- PaddleOCR: paddleocr.yourdomain.com
- Portainer: portainer.yourdomain.com (Protected by Caddy basic auth; on first login, complete Portainer admin setup)
- Postiz: postiz.yourdomain.com
- Prometheus: prometheus.yourdomain.com (Typically used as a data source for Grafana)
- Qdrant: qdrant.yourdomain.com
- RAGApp: ragapp.yourdomain.com
- RAGFlow: ragflow.yourdomain.com
- SearXNG: searxng.yourdomain.com
- Supabase (Dashboard): supabase.yourdomain.com
- Uptime Kuma: uptime-kuma.yourdomain.com (Uptime monitoring dashboard)
- WAHA: waha.yourdomain.com (WhatsApp HTTP API; engines: WEBJS, NOWEB, GOWS)
- Weaviate: weaviate.yourdomain.com

Optional Internal Utility: Python Runner

What it is: An internal-only service to run your custom Python code inside the same Docker network as your other services (n8n, Postgres, Qdrant, etc.). No external ports are exposed, and it is not proxied by Caddy.
How to enable: Select “Python Runner” in the Service Selection Wizard during install/update, or add the profile manually: COMPOSE_PROFILES=...,python-runner.
Where to put code: Place your Python files in python-runner/. The default entry point is python-runner/main.py.
Dependencies: Add them to python-runner/requirements.txt; they will be installed automatically on container start.

Explore n8n:
- Log in to your n8n instance. This is your central hub for workflow automation.
- If you chose to import the community workflows during installation, you'll find over 300 examples in your "Workflows" section. These are a great way to learn and get ideas.
- Start building your first workflow! You have access to over 400 integrations and powerful AI tools.
Utilize Integrated AI Tools:
- Connect n8n with Vector Stores: Use n8n to connect to Qdrant (accessible via its own endpoint if needed, typically qdrant.yourdomain.com), Supabase, or Weaviate (weaviate.yourdomain.com) to store and retrieve information for your AI tasks like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
- Build with Flowise: Access Flowise at flowise.yourdomain.com to create AI agents and applications. You can trigger Flowise agents from n8n or vice-versa.
- Interact with Open WebUI: Use Open WebUI at webui.yourdomain.com as a chat interface for your local AI models or n8n agents (e.g., using the n8n_pipe integration if configured).
- Configure LLMs: If you wish to use large language models (LLMs) from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, or locally via Ollama (if installed), you can easily configure credentials and connections within n8n nodes or in services like Flowise and Open WebUI.
Check Monitoring (Optional):
- Visit Grafana (grafana.yourdomain.com) to see dashboards monitoring your system's performance (data sourced from Prometheus).

Secure Access with Cloudflare Tunnel (Optional)

Cloudflare Tunnel provides zero-trust access to your services without exposing any ports on your server. All traffic is routed through Cloudflare's secure network, providing DDoS protection and hiding your server's IP address.

Benefits

No exposed ports - Ports 80/443 can be completely closed
DDoS protection - Built-in Cloudflare protection
IP hiding - Your server's real IP is never exposed
Zero-trust security - Optional Cloudflare Access integration
No public IP required - Works on private networks

Setup Instructions

See the Cloudflare Tunnel guide: cloudflare-instructions.md

Using Libraries in n8n Code Nodes (v2.0+)

n8n v2.0 uses external task runners to execute JavaScript and Python code in Code nodes. This setup pre-configures the following libraries via n8n/Dockerfile.runner and n8n/n8n-task-runners.json:

JavaScript libraries:

cheerio: For parsing and manipulating HTML/XML (e.g., web scraping).
axios: A promise-based HTTP client for making requests to external APIs.
moment: For parsing, validating, manipulating, and displaying dates/times.
lodash: A utility library for common programming tasks (arrays, objects, strings, etc.).

Pre-installed System Tools in n8n

The custom n8n Docker image (n8n/Dockerfile.n8n) includes the following system-level tools:

ffmpeg: A powerful multimedia framework for converting, recording, and streaming audio and video. Use it via the Execute Command node in n8n workflows for tasks like:
- Converting video/audio formats (e.g., MP4 to MP3)
- Extracting audio from video files
- Resizing or compressing media files
- Generating thumbnails from videos

Upgrading

To update all components (n8n, Open WebUI, etc.) to their latest versions and incorporate the newest changes from this installer project:

make update

For forks: If you maintain a fork with custom changes and want to merge updates from upstream instead of resetting:

make git-pull

This script will:

Fetch the latest updates for the installer from the Git repository.
Temporarily stop the currently running services.
Download the latest versions of the Docker images for all services.
Ask if you want to re-run the n8n workflow import (useful if you skipped this during the initial installation or want to refresh the community workflows).
Restart all services with the new updates.

Custom Configuration That Survives Updates

make update resets tracked files (like Caddyfile and docker-compose.yml) to the latest version, so never edit them directly. Instead, use the dedicated extension points — the files you create there are gitignored, so they are preserved across updates:

Custom Caddy entries (e.g. reverse proxy for a service running outside this stack): drop a site-*.conf file into caddy-addon/. It is imported automatically by the main Caddyfile. See caddy-addon/README.md for examples.
Docker Compose overrides (change any service property): create a docker-compose.override.yml in the project root. It is picked up automatically with the highest precedence.
Settings: values you set in .env are preserved by the updater (except GOST_NO_PROXY, which is regenerated so it always covers newly added services).

Cleaning up Docker

If you need to free up disk space, you can run the Docker cleanup command. This removes all unused Docker containers, images, and volumes.

make clean

This can be useful for removing old images and freeing up space, but be aware that it will remove all unused data.

Quick Commands (Makefile)

The project includes a Makefile for simplified command execution:

Installation & Updates

Command	Description
`make install`	Full installation
`make update`	Update system and services (resets to origin)
`make update-preview`	Preview available updates without applying (dry-run)
`make git-pull`	Update for forks (merges from upstream/main)
`make clean`	Remove unused Docker resources

Monitoring & Logs

Command	Description
`make logs`	View logs (all services)
`make logs s=<service>`	View logs for specific service (e.g., `make logs s=n8n`)
`make status`	Show container status
`make monitor`	Live CPU/memory monitoring
`make restart`	Restart all services
`make stop`	Stop all services
`make start`	Start all services
`make show-restarts`	Show restart count per container
`make import`	Import n8n workflows from backup
`make import n=10`	Import first N workflows only

Diagnostics & Configuration

Command	Description
`make doctor`	Run system diagnostics (checks DNS, SSL, containers, disk, memory)
`make setup-tls`	Configure custom TLS certificates for corporate/internal use

Run make help for the full list of available commands.

Community Ports

n8n-installer-arch by @ndrewpj - Adapted for Arch-based Linux distributions (Arch Linux, CachyOS, Manjaro)

Important Links

Based on a project by coleam00
Original Starter Kit by the n8n team

Troubleshooting

Here are solutions to common issues you might encounter:

Sites not loading even after following the instructions

Symptom: Your domains/sites do not open or return errors even though you completed all installation steps.
Likely cause: Your VPS does not have enough resources for the set of services you selected.
What to try:
1. Check current CPU and RAM usage (e.g., with top/htop, free -h, and docker stats). If resources are saturated, upgrade the server or reduce the number of running services.
2. Try a minimal configuration — start only n8n and verify it comes up. If it works in this minimal setup, enable other services gradually while monitoring the load.

Temporary "Dangerous Site" Warning in Browser

Symptom: Immediately after deploying the services, your browser (e.g., Chrome) might display a "Dangerous Site" or similar security warning when you try to access your services. This warning typically disappears after some time (e.g., within a few hours or by the next day).
Cause: This can happen for a couple of reasons:
1. Brief use of a self-signed certificate: When Caddy (the web server managing your SSL certificates) starts up for a new domain, it might briefly use a temporary, self-signed certificate while it's in the process of requesting and obtaining a valid SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt.
2. Delay in applying the new certificate: There might also be a short delay before the newly obtained certificate from Let's Encrypt is fully applied and recognized by all systems.
Solution: This is usually a temporary issue and resolves itself. Give it some time. If the warning persists for more than 24 hours, check your Caddy logs for any errors related to certificate acquisition and ensure your DNS settings are correctly pointing your domain to the server's IP address. You can also try clearing your browser's cache or using an incognito/private window to re-check.

General Issues

VPN Conflicts: Using a VPN might interfere with downloading Docker images. If you encounter issues pulling images, try temporarily disabling your VPN.
Server Requirements: If you experience unexpected issues, ensure your server meets the minimum hardware and operating system requirements (including version) as specified in the "Prerequisites before Installation" section.

Update Script Not Working

Symptom: The make update command fails, shows errors, or doesn't apply the latest changes.
Cause: This can happen if your local repository has diverged from the upstream, has uncommitted changes, or is in an inconsistent state.
Solution: Run the following command to force-sync your local installation with the latest version:
```
git config pull.rebase true && git fetch origin && git checkout main && git reset --hard "origin/main" && make update
```
Warning: This will discard any local changes you've made to the installer files. If you've customized any scripts or configurations, back them up first.

More AI Templates

For more AI workflow ideas, visit the official n8n AI template gallery. From each workflow, select the Use workflow button to automatically import it into your n8n instance.

AI Templates (Examples from n8n.io)

Tips & Tricks

Accessing Files on the Server

The installer creates a shared folder (by default, located in the same directory where you ran the installation script). This folder is accessible by the n8n application. When you build automations in n8n that need to read or write files on your server, use the path /data/shared inside your n8n workflows. This path in n8n points to the shared folder on your server.

n8n components that interact with the server's filesystem:

Read/Write Files from Disk
Local File Trigger (To start workflows when files change)
Execute Command (To run command-line tools)

Contributors

Want to see who has contributed to this project? Check out the GitHub Contributors Page!

Telemetry

This installer collects anonymous usage statistics via Scarf to help improve the project. No personal data is collected.

Data collected:

Event type (install/update start/complete)
Installer version
Selected services
OS type (e.g., ubuntu-24.04)
Random installation ID (to correlate start/complete events)
Country (determined by Scarf from IP, not stored by us)

To opt out, add to your .env file after installation:

SCARF_ANALYTICS=false

License

This project (originally created by the n8n team, with further development by contributors - see "Important Links") is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.

selfhost-ai