ɳSelf ships with four required services (PostgreSQL, Hasura, Auth, Nginx) that always run. Everything else is optional, you enable only what your project needs. This page covers all seven optional services: their toggle variables, ports, and the additional configuration each one requires.

The canonical way to enable any optional service is:

nself service enable <name>

This writes the toggle variable to your .env.dev file and rebuilds the compose configuration. You can also set the variable manually in your env file and run nself build to regenerate.

Redis provides caching, session storage, and queue backends. It is automatically enabled when the ai, claw, or mux plugins are installed, because all three require a Redis instance.

nself service enable redis

• Redis is accessed internally by other containers at redis:6379.
• There is no Nginx route for Redis, it is never exposed to the internet directly.
• If you are not using any AI plugins but your application needs Redis directly, set REDIS_ENABLED=true in your .env.dev.
• In production, always set a strong REDIS_PASSWORD (16+ characters).

MinIO provides S3-compatible object storage. Use it to store file uploads, static assets, and any binary data your application produces. The Hasura Storage service requires MinIO when file handling is needed.

nself service enable minio

MINIO_ENABLED and STORAGE_ENABLED are aliases, either will enable the service.

The MinIO console is available at http://localhost:{MINIO_CONSOLE_PORT} (default: http://localhost:9001) during development. Log in with MINIO_ROOT_USER and MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD.

• Change MINIO_ROOT_USER from the default minioadmin.
• Set MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD and S3_SECRET_KEY to strong random values in .env.secrets.
• The console port (9001) is not exposed via Nginx by default. To expose it, configure an Nginx route explicitly.
• Run nself config generate-secret to produce strong random values for both password fields.

Mailpit is a development mail server that captures all outgoing emails and displays them in a web UI. It is intended for local development and staging environments only. In production, configure a real SMTP provider instead.

nself service enable mail

Mailpit is a dev tool and should not be used in production. To send real email in production, set the Auth SMTP variables instead:

# .env.prod
AUTH_SMTP_HOST=smtp.sendgrid.net
AUTH_SMTP_PORT=587
AUTH_SMTP_USER=apikey
AUTH_SMTP_PASS=your-sendgrid-api-key
[email protected]

The AUTH_SMTP_* variables configure the Auth service to deliver email via your chosen provider. Any provider that supports standard SMTP works, SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, Resend, AWS SES, and others.

ɳSelf supports multiple search engines. The default is MeiliSearch, but you can switch to Typesense, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Zinc, or Sonic by changing SEARCH_ENGINE.

nself service enable search

MeiliSearch listens on port 7700 by default.

Typesense listens on port 8108 by default.

To switch from MeiliSearch to Typesense:

# .env.dev
SEARCH_ENGINE=typesense
TYPESENSE_API_KEY=your-strong-key-here

Then run nself build to regenerate the compose configuration, followed by nself restart search.

The Functions service provides a serverless runtime for custom business logic. It mounts the ./functions/ directory from your project and makes each file available as an HTTP endpoint via Nginx.

nself service enable functions

When Functions is enabled, ɳSelf mounts ./functions/ from your project root into the container:

your-project/
  functions/
    hello.ts          → GET /hello
    users/
      create.ts       → POST /users/create

Each TypeScript or JavaScript file exports a default handler function. See the Functions documentation for the full request/response API.

MLflow is a machine learning experiment tracking platform. Enable it when your project involves model training, experiment comparison, or artifact storage. MLflow requires MinIO to be enabled when artifact storage is needed.

nself service enable mlflow

MLflow stores experiment artifacts (model files, plots, datasets) in object storage. When MLFLOW_ENABLED=true and MINIO_ENABLED=true, ɳSelf automatically creates the MLFLOW_ARTIFACTS_BUCKET bucket in MinIO and configures MLflow to use it.

If MinIO is not enabled, MLflow falls back to local filesystem artifact storage, which is only appropriate for single-node development use.

• Set MLFLOW_AUTH_ENABLED=true in staging and production to protect the tracking UI.
• Set a strong MLFLOW_AUTH_PASSWORD in .env.secrets.
• Enable MinIO alongside MLflow for persistent artifact storage.

The ɳSelf Admin dashboard is a local GUI companion for your ɳSelf stack. It runs at localhost:3021 on your own machine. It is never deployed to a server and is never accessible from the internet.

nself service enable admin

Alternatively, use the dedicated command:

nself admin start

• Admin is localhost-only. It binds to 127.0.0.1 and is not reachable from outside your machine.
• Admin is not a hosted service. ɳSelf does not run Admin on any server. Each developer runs it locally alongside their stack.
• Admin is distributed as the nself/nself-admin Docker image and is pulled automatically when enabled.
• Do not add an Nginx route for Admin, it is intentionally isolated to your local machine.

You can enable several services in a single command:

nself service enable redis minio functions

Or set the toggle variables in your env file and run nself build:

# .env.dev
REDIS_ENABLED=true
MINIO_ENABLED=true
FUNCTIONS_ENABLED=true

nself build && nself restart

To see which optional services are currently running:

nself status

To get service URLs including optional service endpoints:

nself urls

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