Self-Hosting

Pi-Chat is designed to run on infrastructure you control. The recommended production path uses Docker Compose with the included configuration.

What you need

A server running Docker and Docker Compose
A domain name with HTTPS (required for Google OAuth)
A Google Cloud project with OAuth credentials
Outbound internet access for Google sign-in callbacks

Clone and configure

git clone https://github.com/alextheradu/pi-chat.git
cd pi-chat

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your production values. Key variables to set:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://pichat:yourpassword@db:5432/pichat"
NEXTAUTH_URL="https://chat.yourdomain.com"
NEXTAUTH_SECRET="$(openssl rand -base64 32)"
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID="your-client-id"
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET="your-client-secret"
ALLOWED_DOMAIN="yourdomain.com"
ADMIN_EMAIL="admin@yourdomain.com"
MINIO_ENDPOINT="minio"
MINIO_PORT="9000"
MINIO_ACCESS_KEY="your-access-key"
MINIO_SECRET_KEY="your-secret-key"

Start the stack

docker compose up --build -d

This starts three containers:

app: the Next.js server
db: PostgreSQL
minio: object storage

The entrypoint automatically applies migrations, creates storage buckets, and runs the bootstrap seed before starting the server.

Check health

curl https://chat.yourdomain.com/api/health

Expected response:

{ "db": "ok", "minio": "ok" }

View logs

docker compose logs -f app

Reverse proxy

Put Nginx, Caddy, or a cloud load balancer in front of the app container. The Next.js server listens on port 3001 by default. Configure your proxy to terminate TLS and forward to that port.

Caddy example:

chat.yourdomain.com {
  reverse_proxy localhost:3001
}

Updating

git pull
docker compose up --build -d

Migrations run automatically on each container restart.

Backup

Back up PostgreSQL with:

docker compose exec db pg_dump -U pichat pichat > backup.sql

Back up MinIO by copying the bucket data, or configure MinIO with a remote backend that handles its own redundancy.

Environment variable reference

See the Configuration doc for the full list of environment variables.