Administrators

Run your own Welley server

Our command-line tool installs everything Welley needs on one Linux machine. A cloud server works, and so does your own hardware.

Read: Quick Start: Minimal Welley Deployment Read: Welley CLI Install Docker Engine

We plan to release Welley as open source in the future. No release date or license is announced yet.

Get the host, DNS and email ready

These are the starting requirements from the quick-start. How much capacity you need depends on your users and workload.

Linux host

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, or a similar current distribution.
Start with 2 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM and 60 GB of disk.
Use a fixed public IPv4 address and a non-root user with sudo.

Network

Allow inbound TCP 80 and 443 from the internet. Allow TCP 22 from your own network.
Keep port 80 free for the certificate challenge and the weekly certificate renewal.

Site DNS

Point your domain and storage.<domain> at the host's IP address.
Create both records before you install. The CLI checks them and stops if they don't resolve to the host.

SMTP and administrator email

Have your SMTP host, user, password and from address ready. The default is STARTTLS on port 587.
You'll also need an administrator email for the first login and for password recovery.

Email DNS

Set up SPF, DMARC and the DKIM your provider generates, for the domain of the from address.
Use the exact SPF value from your provider. Merge it into your existing SPF record instead of adding a second one.
The CLI warns you if SPF or DMARC is missing. It can't check your provider's DKIM selector.

Install Docker Engine and Compose

Follow Docker's official instructions for your Linux distribution. Then give your deployment user access to Docker.

Docker Engine installation

Add the user to the Docker group

Replace <user> with your non-root deployment user. After you run this command, log out and log back in.

sudo usermod -aG docker <user>

Check Docker and Compose

Both commands need to work for that user.

docker ps
docker compose version

Download the CLI

Pick the binary for the machine you'll run the CLI on. The deployment host itself has to run Linux.

Linux, x86-64

curl -fL "https://appstore.allroads.social/v1/social.wellesley.wlycli/latest?channel=stable&platform=linux/amd64" -o wlycli
chmod +x wlycli
./wlycli -v

Linux, ARM64

curl -fL "https://appstore.allroads.social/v1/social.wellesley.wlycli/latest?channel=stable&platform=linux/arm64" -o wlycli
chmod +x wlycli
./wlycli -v

macOS, Apple silicon

curl -fL "https://appstore.allroads.social/v1/social.wellesley.wlycli/latest?channel=stable&platform=darwin/arm64" -o wlycli
chmod +x wlycli
./wlycli -v

macOS, Intel

curl -fL "https://appstore.allroads.social/v1/social.wellesley.wlycli/latest?channel=stable&platform=darwin/amd64" -o wlycli
chmod +x wlycli
./wlycli -v

These commands download from the stable channel and show the CLI version.
The version changes with each new release. Use the latest CLI documentation when you install.

Create the deployment

Run this command on the Linux host you prepared. Replace the example domain, email and SMTP values with your own.

./wlycli deploy create \
-d example.com \
-e admin@example.com \
--smtp-host smtp.example.com \
--smtp-user "$MAIL_USER" \
--smtp-password "$MAIL_PASSWORD" \
--smtp-from noreply@example.com

Setting	Default
Install directory	~/.welley/<project>. The example domain produces the project name example_com.
Database	Bundled PostgreSQL, with data under the installation directory.
Stack	Welley platform, RAG pipeline, Nginx, Redis and PostgreSQL, with maintenance containers.
Certificates	Let’s Encrypt through Certbot, with weekly renewal.
Media	Uploads and static files at https://storage.<domain>.
Updates	Stable channel, checked daily. The update process avoids downtime where possible.
Optional services	The minimal setup does not add a managed database, CDN, telemetry or Slack integration.

Before you run it, set MAIL_USER and MAIL_PASSWORD to your SMTP credentials.
The quick-start requires these six flags.
The command checks DNS, writes the deployment files, gets a certificate with Certbot and starts the containers.
The deploy command is an alias for deployment.

The generated administrator password is in the platform log. Keep that output private.

Find the initial password

This container name is for example.com. For your own domain, change the project name.

docker logs example_com-platform-blue-1 | grep "Auto-init complete"

Sign in

Open your domain and sign in with the administrator email you gave with -e. Change the generated password right away.

Check the containers

The quick-start expects to see nginx, platform-blue, rag-pipeline-blue, postgres, redis, autoheal and snoopy.

docker ps

Use the CLI for administration

The CLI also has commands for the platform API. Your account still needs the permissions for each operation.

Before you run an operation, check its current flags in the command help.
The login command takes the API base URL, email and password. It saves the session token it gets back.
Right now, the login command prints its session token in the success log. Keep that output private.

Command groups: accounts, posts, apps, emojis, feeds, reports, rules, settings.

Show available commands

./wlycli --help

Show deployment commands

./wlycli deployment --help

Show login options

./wlycli login --help

Show settings options

./wlycli settings --help

Updates and recovery

By default, a deployment checks for stable updates every day. The server administrator can manage releases in the administration interface.

If your deployment files are still valid but some containers fail, the quick-start says to run restart, which recreates the containers.
Create won't run again while the project directory or its containers still exist.
The force-delete option removes the deployment files and the bundled database. It isn't a recovery step, and it doesn't keep your data.
The deploy-server skill still uses the name deployment update. The current CLI has deployment auto-update instead. Check the current CLI help before you do maintenance by hand.

Recreate containers from the existing deployment

./wlycli deploy restart -d example.com

Recreates the containers from your saved configuration. It doesn't delete deployment data.

Deploy with an AI assistant

If your AI assistant supports SKILL.md packages, download our official deploy-server skill. It guides a DigitalOcean deployment.

For now, the skill only covers DigitalOcean. The CLI quick-start also works with other clouds and your own Linux host.

How to use it

Extract the package and load the deploy-server directory the way your assistant installs skills.
Ask the assistant to use $deploy-server.
The skill asks you for the domain, DNS access, SSH setup, SMTP details and administrator email.
It can set up a DigitalOcean VM and, if you want one, a managed PostgreSQL database. It confirms the deployment inputs and the managed database price with you.

Before you download

The package is an unchanged copy of the original skill.
Its download and update examples are out of date. Get the current stable download URL from the quick-start on this website. Check the CLI help before maintenance.
The skill doesn't come with cloud credentials or a running server, and we can't guarantee it works with every assistant.

The package has SKILL.md, agents/openai.yaml and references/digitalocean.md. Both downloads have the same files.

Download deploy-server.zip (10.7 KB)Download deploy-server.skill (10.7 KB)

Reference docs

The full CLI docs and the deployment skill files. You can read them here without an account.