Quickstart

Truss is self-hosted. The fastest way to a running instance is one command, which pulls the published images and brings up the whole stack (API, dashboard, Postgres, auth, storage, cache). You do not need to clone the repository.

Prerequisites

Docker and Docker Compose v2 (docker compose version)
About 2 GB of free disk for the images on first run

That’s all. Node, Postgres, and the auth services run inside the stack.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/binarysquadd/truss/main/install.sh | sh

This downloads the Compose file into ./truss, generates strong random secrets, and starts everything. Re-running is safe.

Download the Compose file and an env template, fill in secrets, and start:

curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/binarysquadd/truss/main/docker-compose.selfhosted.yml
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/binarysquadd/truss/main/.env.selfhosted.example -o .env.selfhosted

# generate each GENERATE_* secret in .env.selfhosted, e.g. with: openssl rand -hex 32

docker compose -f docker-compose.selfhosted.yml --env-file .env.selfhosted up -d

Give it a minute to run migrations and become healthy.

2. Log in

Open the dashboard at http://localhost:3000.

On first boot Truss seeds a default admin (the way Grafana and Argo CD do) so you can sign in right away:

Email: admin@truss.local

Password: printed once to the API logs —

docker compose -f docker-compose.selfhosted.yml logs truss-api | grep "Default admin"

Change it immediately under Settings → Account → Change Password.

3. Create an API key

In the dashboard, go to Settings → API Keys → Create. Pick service_role for full server-side access. The full secret is shown once, so copy it.

4. Make your first API call

curl
JavaScript

curl http://localhost:3000/v1/status \
  -H "apikey: truss_sk_your_key_here"

const res = await fetch('http://localhost:3000/v1/status', {
  headers: { apikey: 'truss_sk_your_key_here' },
});
const status = await res.json();
console.log(status.database.table_count);

The dashboard and API are served on the same origin (:3000); Nginx proxies /v1 and /api to the backend, so you point clients at one URL.

What’s next?

Self-Hosting — run it for production: Helm, TLS, hardening, backups
Configuration — every environment variable explained
API Keys — anon vs service_role, rotation, scoping
Database — SQL-over-HTTP, Auto-REST, pgvector, full-text search