Getting an instance

Kolibri is self-hosted. There is no kolibri.day account to sign up for; there is software you or somebody you work with runs. That leaves three cases.

Somebody already runs one

Then you have a URL and either an invite link or a password, and nothing on this page applies. Go to your first hour.

You want to try it without installing anything

demo.kolibri.day is a real instance with a workspace already in it — three projects, a running cycle, a backlog with a realistic spread, some pages and some comments. Everything in this manual can be tried there.

It resets, and it is public

The demo is wiped back to its starting state on a schedule, and anybody can sign in. Do not put anything in it you would mind a stranger reading, and do not expect what you wrote yesterday to still be there.

You want to run one

One command, on any machine with Docker:

git clone https://github.com/LucaFrankfurt/AIfirstPMO.git kolibri
cd kolibri
docker compose up -d --build

That brings up the app on http://localhost:4000 and an S3-compatible object store for uploads, already wired to each other — the bucket is created on first boot and nothing has to be configured afterwards. The first account you create in the browser owns the instance.

There is a single-container variant that keeps uploads on the volume instead:

docker compose -f docker-compose.lite.yml up -d --build

And it runs without Docker at all — Node 22.18 or newer is the only requirement, because the server runs TypeScript directly and SQLite is built into Node.

Where the operator documentation is

This site is the manual for using Kolibri. Running it is a different document, and it lives in the repository rather than here, because it changes with the code it describes:

docs/deployment.md	TLS, backups, upgrades, every environment variable, and the Coolify path
docs/architecture.md	How the pieces fit, and why there is no Redis or Postgres
docs/sync.md	The offline protocol, the conflict rules and the failure modes
docs/security.md	The threat model — what is checked, where, and what has not been reviewed
docs/notifications.md	Wiring up a mail relay, Web Push and Telegram
docs/storage.md	Disk versus S3, pre-signed downloads, migrating between them
docs/api.md	The REST API
docs/mcp.md	Every MCP tool, prompt and resource
TODO.md	What is missing, what is unverified, and what was deferred on purpose

All of them are at github.com/LucaFrankfurt/AIfirstPMO.

The guide inside the app

Press ? anywhere in Kolibri. There is a guide built into the app with animated diagrams of each area and an explorer for how the pieces nest — and unlike this site it knows which version you are actually running. A screen with nothing on it yet links to the card that explains what goes there.