Self-Hosting

Truss is designed to be self-hosted. The API server runs as a Docker container; the dashboard, admin panel, and docs are static SPAs that deploy to any CDN (Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, Netlify, etc.).

Architecture overview

apps/
  api/         Express API server (port 8787) → Docker / Coolify
  dashboard/   React SPA (port 5173)          → Cloudflare Pages / static host
  admin/       React SPA (port 5174)          → Cloudflare Pages / static host
  docs/        Astro Starlight (port 5175)    → Cloudflare Pages / static host

The API server is the only component that needs a server runtime. Everything else is static HTML/JS.

Docker deployment

The API has its own Dockerfile at apps/api/Dockerfile. A root-level Dockerfile also works for platforms like Coolify that build from the repo root.

# Build from the repo root
docker build -t truss-api .

# Run with your env vars
docker run -d \
  --name truss-api \
  -p 8787:8787 \
  -e DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@host.docker.internal:5432/postgres \
  -e TRUSS_AUTH_REQUIRED=false \
  truss-api

Docker Compose

A minimal compose setup with Postgres and the Truss API:

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"

  truss-api:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8787:8787"
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://postgres:postgres@postgres:5432/postgres
      TRUSS_AUTH_REQUIRED: "false"
    depends_on:
      - postgres

volumes:
  pgdata:

Coolify deployment

Truss works well with Coolify. Point Coolify at your Git repo, set the build context to the repo root, and configure these env vars in the Coolify dashboard:

1. DATABASE_URL — your Postgres connection string
2. CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS — comma-separated frontend origins (e.g. https://truss.yourdomain.com)
3. Any optional service URLs (Kratos, Keto, MinIO, etc.)

The API binds to 0.0.0.0:8787 by default, which is required for Docker/Traefik proxying.

Frontend deployment

Each frontend app builds to static output:

# Build dashboard
cd apps/dashboard && npm run build

# Build admin
cd apps/admin && npm run build

Set the VITE_API_BASE_URL env var at build time to point at your API server:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=https://api.truss.yourdomain.com npm run build

Deploy the dist/ folder to Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, or any static host.

Full stack with services

For all features, you’ll want:

Service	Purpose	Default Port
PostgreSQL 16+	Database	5432
Ory Kratos	Authentication	4433 (public), 4434 (admin)
Ory Keto	Authorization	4466 (read), 4467 (write)
MinIO	S3 Storage	9000 (S3), 9001 (console)
Ory Hydra	OAuth2/OIDC	4444 (public), 4445 (admin)
Ory Oathkeeper	API Gateway	4455 (proxy), 4456 (admin)

See Configuration for all environment variables.