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The Desk
📖 These docs track the in-development version. The latest released version is v1.14.0. Newly documented features may not be in the image you run yet; see the changelog for what has shipped.

The Desk

A real-time, self-hostable team chat application — workspaces, channels, threads, reactions, search, and scheduled messages. Own your data; run it on your own hardware.
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Run your own instance

Section titled “Run your own instance”

The Desk is built with Laravel, Inertia + Vue 3, Laravel Reverb (WebSockets), and Meilisearch. The production stack ships as Docker containers you run yourself — no SaaS, no per-seat pricing, your data on your infrastructure.

Requirements

What you need before you start: Docker, a domain, and a TLS-terminating reverse proxy. Read the requirements.

Installation

Two supported paths — pull the prebuilt image or build from source at a release tag. Install The Desk.

Configuration

Every setting is read from .env at runtime: APP_URL, mail, the browser-vs-server Reverb split, and more. Configure your instance.

Feature toggles

Turn features like open registration on or off from .env. See the toggles.

Architecture

What runs and why — the web app, Reverb, queue, scheduler, Postgres, Meilisearch, and Redis. Understand the stack.

Upgrading

Tag-based upgrades, automatic migrations, and version-scoped search reindexing. Upgrade safely.