Open Source
Run Ciele on your own infrastructure. The core is open source under AGPL-3.0 — the admin console, chat widget, flow router, knowledge pipeline, and operations surfaces.
The core of Ciele is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, and you can run it yourself. The open-source edition is the whole product your visitors and administrators use: the admin console, the chat widget, the flow router, the knowledge and retrieval pipeline, and the operations surfaces — inbox, improvements, insights, and alerts.
Same product, you operate it
Every feature page in the main Documentation applies to a self-hosted deployment. The difference is operational: you provide the infrastructure, the database, and the AI provider keys, and you apply upgrades. The managed alternative is Ciele Cloud.
What you provide
- A place to run it. The apps are standard Next.js applications; anywhere that runs Node can host them.
- A database. Ciele stores its data in Postgres, using Supabase for the database, authentication, and row-level security.
- AI provider keys. Assistants call an AI provider to generate answers; you bring your own keys. See Configuration.
The license, briefly
AGPL-3.0 is an open-source license. You may run, study, modify, and share the
software. Its defining condition is the network clause: if you modify Ciele and
offer that modified version to others over a network, you must also offer those
users the corresponding source of your modified version. Running it unmodified,
or modifying it only for your own organization's internal use, does not trigger
that obligation. This page is a practical summary, not legal advice; the
authoritative terms are in the LICENSE file at the repository root.
If your organization would rather not take on AGPL obligations or the operating work, Ciele Cloud is the same core under a commercial arrangement.
What is not in the open-source edition
A small set of commercial, managed-service features live outside the open-source core and are not part of a self-hosted deployment. See The open-core boundary for the exact line.
Next steps
Installation
One command with Docker, or run the monorepo directly.
Configuration
Environment variables for the database and AI providers.
Database
Postgres, Supabase, and how migrations are applied.
Background workers
The optional graph and crawler services, and what they add.
Upgrading
Take a new release, back up, and roll back.
The open-core boundary
Exactly what is open source and what is Cloud-only.