Self-hosting

skael is a single Go binary that embeds the dashboard and serves the API. It needs one thing: a Postgres database.

Configuration

Variable	Required	Default	Description
DATABASE_URL	yes	—	Postgres connection string
STORAGE_PATH	no	./data/skills	Archive storage: a local directory, or s3://bucket/prefix for S3
LISTEN_ADDR	no	:8080	HTTP listen address

Migrations run automatically on startup. Auth is via user accounts and personal API keys — there is no static server key; sign up to create the first account.

Bring your own Postgres

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@host:5432/skael?sslmode=disable" \
  -v skael-data:/data/skills \
  -e STORAGE_PATH=/data/skills \
  ghcr.io/skael-dev/skael:latest

Bundled Postgres (Docker Compose)

docker compose up -d

This starts the platform plus a Postgres container with a persistent volume. The platform is at http://localhost:8080; sign up to create your first account.

Storage

By default, skill archives are stored on the local filesystem under STORAGE_PATH (paths are validated to stay within the storage root). In Docker/Kubernetes, mount a persistent volume there — otherwise archives are lost when the container restarts.

Object storage (S3-compatible)

For ephemeral/k8s deployments or to run multiple replicas, point STORAGE_PATH at S3-compatible object storage (AWS S3, MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces):

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@host:5432/skael?sslmode=disable" \
  -e STORAGE_PATH="s3://my-bucket/skael" \
  -e S3_REGION="us-east-1" \
  -e S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID="..." -e S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="..." \
  ghcr.io/skael-dev/skael:latest

Variable	Notes
STORAGE_PATH	s3://bucket/prefix switches to S3; any other value is a local path
S3_ENDPOINT	default s3.amazonaws.com; set for MinIO/R2/Spaces
S3_REGION	falls back to AWS_REGION; default us-east-1
S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID / S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	fall back to AWS_*; omit both to use an IAM instance role
S3_USE_PATH_STYLE	true for MinIO
S3_USE_SSL	default true; false for local MinIO

The bucket must already exist. On AWS, omit the keys to use an EKS/ECS instance role.