Self-hosting the open-source alternative to Vellum

What self-hosting an open-source answer to Vellum means

Vellum's own page describes a personal assistant you run yourself: it says Vellum is open source, runs locally on your own hardware or in the cloud, and can be deployed on a VPS or a private cloud. Kortix is open source too, and its self-host path runs the platform for a whole team. You install one Docker Compose stack on a server you control, and every agent session still runs on its own cloud computer.

Your own server, your data, your keys

A self-hosted instance is the full Kortix platform on a server you control. The project is a git repo you own, with your agents, skills, company memory, and connectors as files. Connector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machine. Secrets are encrypted at rest with a key per project. Hosting is yours to place: run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network.

Where a personal install ends and a company self-host begins

Vellum's local install is built around one person: one assistant, its own memory, its own credentials, on your device or your private cloud. A company self-host starts when the work spans people. Kortix gives every session its own place to work: one isolated sandbox per session, each on its own branch, so many agents run in parallel on one configuration and what they produce reaches main through a change request a person merges. That is the line between one assistant and a company operating system. Read the article walks through the difference.

What you actually run

The platform ships as one Docker Compose stack: the web app, the API, the LLM gateway, and the database services, installed and updated by kortix self-host. Agent sessions do not run on that server. They run on a separate sandbox provider, which is why the docs ask for a sandbox provider key and for the instance to be reachable from the internet. Models are bring-your-own-key in the app, and GitHub connects in the dashboard.

Your deployment options

You choose where it lives. Domain mode is the production setup: a public domain with TLS. Tunnel mode is for evaluation on your own box. Local mode keeps the services on loopback. When you would rather not run a server, Kortix Cloud runs the same platform for you. The self-hosting docs list the server requirements, DNS records, and the checks to run after the first start.