Docker Compose Deployment

What the bundled Compose file runs

TabSlate Server's docker-compose.yml defines exactly two services:

• api — the official server image, ghcr.io/tabslate-dev/tabslate-server:latest, built and published to the GitHub Container Registry. It is not published to the host: no port mapping puts it on your machine's network directly, only expose: ["8080"] inside the Compose network.
• caddy — a Caddy reverse proxy that terminates TLS in front of api and obtains/renews a certificate automatically via Let's Encrypt, publishing ports 80 and 443 to the host.

There is no bundled PostgreSQL (or Redis) container. api connects out to whatever DATABASE_URL in your .env points at — an external Postgres instance you provide, whether that's a managed provider or one you run yourself.

Because api is never reachable over plaintext HTTP from outside the Compose network, this setup requires a domain name pointed at the server so Caddy can issue a certificate for it. If you have no domain and only need the server reachable from a private network, put your own TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front of api instead of using the bundled Caddy service — and still never publish port 8080 directly to the public internet.

Deploy

1. Point a DNS A/AAAA record for your domain at this server.

2. Download docker-compose.yml, Caddyfile, and .env.example:

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TabSlate-dev/TabSlate-server/main/docker-compose.yml
   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TabSlate-dev/TabSlate-server/main/Caddyfile
   curl -o .env https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TabSlate-dev/TabSlate-server/main/.env.example

3. Edit .env: set DOMAIN to that hostname, DATABASE_URL to your Postgres connection string, and JWT_SECRET to a generated secret (see Requirements). Add any optional variables you need from Environment Configuration.

4. Start the stack:

   docker compose up -d

   (docker-compose up -d also works if you're on the older standalone Compose binary instead of the docker compose plugin.)

You can check the shape of your edited docker-compose.yml without starting anything using:

docker compose config

Checking it came up

docker compose ps
docker compose logs api
docker compose logs caddy

docker compose logs -f api follows the API service's logs live; add --tail 100 to either command to limit output to the most recent lines. See Troubleshooting for what to look for if the stack doesn't come up cleanly.