Starting a Self-Hosted Server

note

This tutorial assumes that you've already installed ak.

There are several ways to start a self-hosted ak server. Choose the optimal one, depending on your needs and constraints:

"Dev" mode: the quickest way to start a local server without installing or configuring any dependencies
Docker: includes some prepackaged dependencies and configurations that make AutoKitteh more robust
"Prod" mode: requires configuring and tuning, to tailor it to your reliability and performance needs

Dev Mode

Simply run this command:

ak up --mode dev

Under the hood

"Dev" mode does the following when the server starts:

Check whether a Temporal server is ready - if not, start a Temporal dev server as a subprocess
Initialize an in-memory SQLite database (file::memory:)
Initialize an in-memory Miniredis cache

The downside of this mode is that it's less reliable, less efficient, and doesn't have failover or load-balancing options.

It exists mainly for personal experimentation purposes.

Run these commands:

git clone https://github.com/autokitteh/autokitteh.git
cd autokitteh
docker-compose up -d

info

The default compose file starts AutoKitteh in "dev" mode.

tip

See the comments in the default compose file for examples of optional customizations of Temporal, using a PostgreSQL database, etc.

For the ak up command to work without the --mode dev flag, ak requires at least a Temporal server - see the configuration page for details.

See also other pages in the configuration section, to productionize and tune the AutoKitteh server, especially: