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Self-Host InsForge on Coolify

This guide walks through self-hosting the InsForge platform on Coolify, an open-source PaaS you run on your own server.
This deploys InsForge itself, not the app you built. If you just want to take your app live, use Sites instead.

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Prerequisites

  • A Coolify instance and a server attached to it
  • A domain or subdomain pointed at that server

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1. Create the resource

New Resource → Docker Compose, connect this repository (a public repository needs no GitHub App), then set: Leave Base Directory at the repository root. The compose file builds Postgres from deploy/Dockerfile.postgres, whose build context is the root.

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2. Environment variables

Set these under Environment Variables. Generate each secret with openssl rand -hex 32:
ENCRYPTION_KEY falls back to JWT_SECRET when unset, and rotating JWT_SECRET afterwards makes every stored secret impossible to decrypt — set it to its own value now. Postgres reads POSTGRES_PASSWORD only when it initializes the cluster. Changing it later does not change the database password. Everything else is optional; .env.example lists every supported variable with its default.

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3. Assign a domain

Coolify does not expose a compose service that publishes no ports. Under the resource’s insforge service, assign your domain and set the port to 7130, then add the matching URLs to the environment:
These have to match the URL browsers use, or the dashboard will call the wrong origin. Only insforge needs a domain. Postgres, PostgREST and the Deno runtime stay on the internal network.

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4. Deploy

Press Deploy. The first run builds two small images (Postgres and the Deno function host) and pulls the rest, then runs the backend’s migrations automatically. Open your domain and sign in with ROOT_ADMIN_USERNAME / ROOT_ADMIN_PASSWORD.

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Updating

Coolify redeploys on push if you enabled automatic deployment, or press Redeploy. Each deploy rebuilds the Postgres and Deno images from the current commit, so their configuration and function host track the release. Review the diff for .env.example before updating — a release that adds a variable will not add it to your Coolify environment.

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Storage

Object storage defaults to the container filesystem on a Docker volume. For S3, MinIO or RustFS, see Self-Hosted Storage and set the S3_* variables in Coolify’s environment; the compose file passes them through.

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Why Postgres is built rather than pulled

InsForge’s Postgres needs three files from this repository: postgresql.conf, which loads the insforge_pg_utils extension that row-level security on managed tables depends on, plus two init scripts. Coolify creates file bind mounts as directories (coollabsio/coolify#3375), so mounting them is not an option — Postgres will not start. Building the image at deploy time puts the current files in it instead, which also means the configuration cannot fall behind the code the way a prebuilt image can.