STARFORT.

Personal server appliance · v0.1

The cloud, on hardware you own.

Starfort runs the services you currently rent — media streaming, file storage, documents, photos — on a machine sitting in your home. One click installs an app. The system handles the containers, networking and storage. You keep the data.

▸ Install on Proxmox Read the architecture
0 Third parties
2 Static binaries
LAN Only surface

01 / The problem

Convenience you rent can be revoked.

Moving your digital life to third-party clouds solved multi-device access and sharing. It also handed over ownership. The convenience is real — so is the dependency, and the consequences when it breaks are irreversible.

Terms

Rules change unilaterally

Pricing, storage limits, and content policy are rewritten without your consent, on a schedule that is not yours.

Continuity

Services shut down

Acquisitions, sunsets, and retention expirations delete archives that took a decade to accumulate.

Access

Accounts get locked

An automated flag can sever you from your own photos, documents and mail, with no appeal that reaches a human.

02 / The solution

Self-hosting without the sysadmin.

Starfort keeps the useful half of the cloud and drops the landlord. You work in familiar concepts — apps, files, share this document. Containers, networking and storage stay under the hood.

Install the daemon

One command provisions starfortd on your Proxmox VE host. No root SSH, no service to babysit.

Open the panel

Set a password on first boot. The admin panel is served straight from the daemon, on your LAN.

Install an app

One click creates an unprivileged LXC container, provisions the app, and watches it stay healthy.

03 / Apps

One app today. The categories you actually use, next.

v0 ships the full vertical slice with a single bundled app, proving the whole path from click to running container. The rest of the catalog follows the same lifecycle.

Jellyfin

Media streaming for film, series and music.

Shipping v0

File sync

Drive-style storage that syncs across your devices.

Planned Post-v0

Documents

Collaborative editing, without a subscription.

Planned Post-v0

Photos

Timeline, albums and face search, on your disks.

Planned Post-v0

04 / Architecture

A small privileged surface, and nothing else.

The daemon that faces you never runs as root. A separate, tightly scoped helper is the only component allowed to touch the hypervisor.

Host
Proxmox VE

Your hardware, your hypervisor, your disks.

unix socket · sudo
Daemon
starfortd — unprivileged

HTTP API, auth, state, telemetry, embedded admin panel. Runs as its own user.

validated lifecycle calls
Boundary
starfort-helper — root

The only privileged binary. Validates the request, then calls pct. Nothing else.

create · start · stop · destroy
Apps
Unprivileged LXC containers

One app per container, on your LAN bridge with DHCP. Reachable directly.

Base OSProxmox VE
DaemonStatic Go binary
IsolationUnprivileged LXC
Password recordPBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256
SessionsIn-memory · 24 h
StateAtomic JSON writes
ReconciliationStartup · every 30 s
Admin panelEmbedded SPA · no Node
ExposureLAN only

05 / Status

Where v0 stands.

Starfort is early and says so. v0 is the vertical slice: enough to prove the whole path end to end, on real hardware, with nothing faked.

Shipped in v0 Live
  • Proxmox lifecycle orchestration Done
  • Bundled Jellyfin provisioning Done
  • Password auth and sessions Done
  • Health checks and reconciliation Done
  • Embedded admin panel Done
Next Queued
  • Tailscale remote access Planned
  • Admin-panel TLS Planned
  • App catalog Planned
  • Encrypted off-site backup Planned
  • Purpose-built hardware Planned

Get started

Run it on your own hardware.

You need a Proxmox VE host, an SSH account with sudo, and a Debian template already downloaded. The installer is idempotent and never asks for root SSH.

$ make remote-install REMOTE=admin@proxmox-host