watchtower-podman 1.21.0

Podman update and multi-node website deployment automation

WatchTower

Turn the computers you already own into your personal cloud.
Got a laptop or mini-PC gathering dust? Give it a job. Point WatchTower at your GitHub repo and your website is live — database, backups, and a private URL included — on hardware you control, for $0/month.
When something breaks, it fixes itself — or tells you exactly what's missing and how to fix it.
Rootless Podman · private over Tailscale · built for people, not DevOps teams.

Website · How it works · Pricing · Download

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Why WatchTower

Coolify, Dokploy, Umbrel, and CasaOS all let you self-host applications. None of them repair a broken deployment for you. WatchTower does.

• Self-healing deployments — when a deployment fails (port conflict, registry flake, out-of-memory, build error), WatchTower classifies the cause, applies a safe fix, and retries automatically. Anything it cannot fix safely is queued for your review with an AI-generated root-cause analysis.
• Your hardware, not a rented VPS — designed to run on the machine you already own. No monthly server bill, no usage-based surprises.
• Rootless and private by default — Podman-first (no root Docker daemon), reachable over your own Tailscale tailnet. Nothing is exposed to the public internet until you decide to go public.
• Batteries included — one-click managed databases (Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis) with auto-wired connection strings, scheduled backups, and off-host backup copies to another of your devices, plus GitHub push-to-deploy and an app catalog.
• Open-core, no lock-in — Apache 2.0 + ELv2. Self-host it forever; your projects and data remain yours.

Different from containrrr/watchtower (a Docker image auto-updater). This WatchTower is a full self-hosted deploy + database + self-heal control plane for Podman.

Quick start

Desktop app (easiest)

Grab the installer for your platform from Releases:

Platform	Install
macOS (12+)	Download the .dmg (arm64 for Apple Silicon, x64 for Intel), drag into Applications
Linux	Download the .AppImage, then chmod +x WatchTower-*.AppImage && ./WatchTower-*.AppImage — or use the .deb
Windows	Download and run the .exe installer

The app is self-contained — it bundles Python and the web UI, stores data in ~/.watchtower/, and auto-updates from GitHub Releases.

macOS first launch: builds aren't yet signed with an Apple Developer ID, so right-click the app → Open → Open (one time only). If it still won't start, use browser mode below — same UI, no Electron wrapper.

From source (30 seconds)

git clone https://github.com/sinhaankur/WatchTower.git
cd WatchTower
./run.sh

run.sh sets up everything on first run (venv, npm install, frontend build) and opens the app — Electron if a display is available, otherwise the browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000. Also: ./run.sh browser | desktop | stop | logs | update.

Requirements: Python 3.8+, Node 18+. Podman is optional and WatchTower offers to install it for you when needed.

From PyPI (no clone)

Published on PyPI as watchtower-podman:

pipx install watchtower-podman   # isolated (recommended for a CLI)
# or: pip install watchtower-podman
watchtower-deploy serve --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

Docker

export WATCHTOWER_API_TOKEN="change-this-token"
docker compose -f docker-compose.app.yml up -d --build

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000 and sign in with the token. HA setup: deploy/docker-compose.ha.yml.

What's inside

Deploy from GitHub	Push-to-deploy via webhooks, PR previews, rollbacks, build logs, deploy to this PC or remote nodes over SSH
Managed databases	Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, Mongo, Redis as rootless Podman pods — auto-wired DATABASE_URL, scheduled backups, adopt-existing
Off-host backups	Every database backup auto-copies to another device on your network (over Tailscale) or a cloud/NAS folder, so your data survives a dead disk — across macOS, Linux & Windows
Self-healing	Failure classifier + auto-fix-and-retry + human approval queue with AI root-cause analysis (bring your own LLM — Ollama, LM Studio, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint)
Private remote access	Built-in Tailscale integration — reach your server from anywhere, expose nothing; go public via Cloudflare when ready
Container manager	Full rootless Podman container/pod management UI, plus the classic health-aware image auto-updater (watchtower start)
Team & governance	GitHub sign-in, org roles, append-only audit log, encrypted secrets

Trust

WatchTower runs unattended on your own machine, so it is built to a standard where you don't have to take its behaviour on faith:

• No telemetry, ever. WatchTower is fully self-hosted. Your code, data, and metrics never leave your hardware, and there is no phone-home of any kind.
• Secrets are encrypted at rest. GitHub tokens, SSH keys, and LLM API keys are stored Fernet-encrypted — never in plaintext, never echoed back by the API, and never written to logs or audit records.
• Append-only audit log. Every mutating action — project changes, deployments, environment-variable edits, automated fixes — records who did it, when, from which IP, and with which request ID, so any change can be traced end to end.
• Hardened by design. Server-side requests are guarded against SSRF (private, loopback, and cloud-metadata addresses are blocked), static file serving is path-traversal-guarded, container commands never pass through a shell, and all user-supplied names are strictly validated.
• Auditable. The entire codebase is public. Review it, fork it, or run it air-gapped. See docs/SECURITY_HARDENING.md for the full hardening guide.

Control

Automation is only useful if you hold the steering wheel:

• Autonomy is opt-in. The self-healing auto-fix switch ships off. Until you enable it, every proposed fix waits in a human approval queue — nothing is applied behind your back.
• Guardrails on automation. Even with autonomy on, auto-fixes are rate-limited per project; if a deployment keeps failing, WatchTower stops retrying and escalates to you instead of thrashing.
• The AI agent acts as you — no more. Every agent action runs under your authenticated identity and permissions; there is no privilege escalation path. A read-only mode blocks destructive operations entirely.
• Bring your own LLM. All AI features work with any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including fully local ones (Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp). No cloud account is required, and nothing is sent to a provider you didn't configure.
• Your data is portable. State lives in a standard SQLite database under ~/.watchtower/ (or your own Postgres). Built-in backup and export mean you can leave at any time with everything you brought.
• Kill switches. The self-heal loop and the agent's destructive tools can each be disabled with a single environment variable, independent of the UI.

How WatchTower compares

	WatchTower	Coolify	Dokploy	Umbrel / CasaOS
Deploy from GitHub	✅	✅	✅	partial (app store)
One-click managed databases	✅	✅	✅	✅
Self-heals a failed deploy	✅	❌	❌	❌
Runs on your own PC (not a VPS)	✅	VPS-first	VPS-first	✅
Rootless (no root Docker daemon)	✅ (Podman)	❌ (root Docker)	❌	❌ (Docker)
Private by default (Tailscale)	✅ built-in	add-on	add-on	add-on
Desktop app	✅	❌	❌	❌

The differentiator is the third row. Every tool in this table lets you self-host applications; only WatchTower diagnoses and repairs a failed deployment on its own. It is built to run unattended on the machine you already own — rootless, and without exposing anything to the internet.

Comparison reflects public feature sets as of mid-2026. WatchTower is a younger project than Coolify — its strengths are self-healing and rootless operation on your own hardware, not breadth or years of hardening.

Docs & guides

Topic	Where
What's new	CHANGELOG · Releases
Quick reference	docs/QUICK_REFERENCE.md
Container auto-update service (config + troubleshooting)	docs/CONTAINER_UPDATE_SERVICE.md
Tiny local LLMs for self-heal analysis	docs/TINY_LLM_GUIDE.md
High availability	docs/HA_PODMAN_WATCHTOWER.md
Research → feature ideas (P2P mesh, self-healing, edge caching)	docs/RESEARCH_IDEAS.md
WatchTower vs Vercel	docs/VERCEL_ALTERNATIVE.md
Security hardening	docs/SECURITY_HARDENING.md
Examples	docs/EXAMPLES.md
Releasing (maintainers)	docs/RELEASING.md · RELEASE_QUALITY.md
The Shipping Playbook — release lessons for building any app	docs/SHIPPING_PLAYBOOK.md

Development

pytest tests/                     # backend test suite
npm --prefix web run lint         # frontend lint (0 warnings allowed)
npm --prefix web run build        # typecheck + production build
npm --prefix web test             # frontend smoke tests

Architecture notes live in CLAUDE.md; contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Roadmap

• Peer-to-peer node mesh — live membership, auto-failover, and gossip-triggered state sync shipped (SWIM gossip over the tailnet: nodes track who's up in real time, standbys converge in seconds instead of minutes, and a standby self-promotes when the mesh confirms the primary is down). Next: decentralized deploy placement over the same fabric
• Edge caching / CDN — cache a deployed site's static assets at the edge (cache-control + optional Cloudflare CDN in front of the tunnel) so assets serve fast without hitting origin every time
• Broader Docker parity and runtime features
• Windows and macOS container-service depth
• Richer notification integrations
• Enhanced monitoring/metrics integrations
• Stronger rollback and scheduling controls

License

WatchTower is dual-licensed — pick the option that matches how you'll use it:

• Free (default): Apache 2.0 outside pro/ + Elastic License 2.0 inside pro/. Use it for self-hosting, internal commercial use, forks, audits, and contributions. Free forever.
• Commercial License (template): paid option for resellers / SaaS hosts / OEM embedders / regulated environments that need a written agreement, defined SLA, or removable attribution. Email [e-mail] with subject "Commercial License Inquiry". Pricing tiers at https://sinhaankur.github.io/WatchTower/pricing/.

See LICENSING.md for the full breakdown.

Use of a running installation is governed by the Terms of Use, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy — accepted in-app at first login. WatchTower is self-hosted: your data stays on your machine and there is no vendor telemetry.

Feedback & support

WatchTower is actively developed, and user reports directly shape the roadmap. If a screen is confusing, an error is unexplained, or a feature is missing, we want to hear about it.

• Discussions — questions, ideas, and show-and-tell
• Issues — bug reports and feature requests
• Website & documentation
• Sponsor the project

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WatchTower performs automated update/deployment operations. Validate in non-production environments first and keep reliable backups before production rollouts.