Overview
What the self-hosted Community Edition is and what it needs
The Specbench Community Edition is the complete product, self-hosted: the same web app, API, and MCP server as app.specbench.io, with no feature gating and no phone-home. It's licensed AGPL-3.0 and developed in the open at github.com/specbench-io/specbench.
If you just want to use Specbench, the hosted app is the shorter path — nothing to run, nothing to upgrade. Self-host when you want the spec on your own infrastructure — or try it locally first; the trial stack is the real stack, and wiping it is one command.
What you're running
The stack is three services plus storage, all defined in the self-host
docker-compose.yml attached to every
release. The app images
are published to GitHub Container Registry with each release; you pull them,
you don't build them.
| Service | What it is | Default port |
|---|---|---|
web | The web app (nginx, proxies /api to the API) | 5173 |
api | The .NET API — all state lives behind this | 5174 |
mcp | The MCP server for agents | 8081 |
postgres | Postgres 18 — the only durable store | 5432 |
redis | Coordination only — deliberately wipeable | 6379 |
Everything durable lives in Postgres, including the data-protection key ring. Redis holds only coordination state (realtime fan-out, presence); losing it loses nothing.
Requirements
- Docker with Compose.
- One host is fine — a 1 vCPU / 2 GB VM with a little swap runs the whole stack, bundled proxy included. There are no minimum-spec surprises; Postgres is the only component that grows with your data.
Honest expectations
- Identity: out of the box the Instance runs local accounts — the first person to arrive creates the first account and claims the Instance; sign-up closes behind them and everyone else joins by invitation. For production use you can connect any OIDC issuer — see Configuration.
- Source control: publishing specs to GitHub requires registering your own GitHub App — see The GitHub App. It's a one-time setup, documented step by step, but it is real setup.
- Upgrades: pull the new images and restart; the API migrates the database on startup. Specbench is pre-1.0 — a minor version may include breaking changes, always called out in the release notes. Back up Postgres before upgrading.