BOSS is a self-hosted control plane for AI software work. An agent can plan, spend, and change things. BOSS makes a person review the plan, the result, and the cost, and keeps the receipt.
Who it is for
A technical founder who will run BOSS on a server they administer. You should be comfortable with one Linux machine, Docker, a GitHub repository you are allowed to change, and a diff. The people you invite share that install. It is not a hosted service.
Credentials stay on the machine. A call to a hosted model sends that provider the authentication and the task data the call needs. A local model can keep inference on the machine.
The shortest path
- Install v1.0-rc10.11.
- Claim the install.
- Connect a repository.
- Connect a model.
- Open one pull request.
The quickstart is those steps. A hostname and TLS are in the hostname guide. Passkeys, passwords, and an SSH tunnel are in sign-in.
You need Git on the install machine. If GitHub asks you to sign in, use an account that can read the repository. On Ubuntu or Debian without Git, first run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y git.
(
set -e
git clone --branch v1.0-rc10.11 https://github.com/seanventures/boss.git boss-rc10.11
cd boss-rc10.11
BOSS_RELEASE_COMMIT="$(git rev-parse HEAD)"
./install.sh --dir "$PWD" --ref "$BOSS_RELEASE_COMMIT"
)
Use a new directory named boss-rc10.11. The command stops if the clone fails, and it pins the install to that commit. Continue from cd boss-rc10.11. Services listen on the machine itself. Add --console-origin https://boss.example.com, with your hostname, when the console will be opened from somewhere else. Omit it to open http://127.0.0.1:3000 on the install machine.
boss upgrade writes a backup, then moves to a later release. boss upgrade --to REF picks the release. boss uninstall stops BOSS and keeps the data. Ports, flags, and recovery are in the installer guide.
The copy at boss.sean.network/install.sh is published separately. This page does not treat it as v1.0-rc10.11. The manual in this repository is the source. The hosted docs are published separately too.
The installer targets Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 and Debian 12/13, and it can set up Docker. The bounded installed checks behind this candidate are an owned Linux arm64 machine that already had Docker. A clean-host install and useful provider work are separate checks. Read the release notes and the RC9 validation record before you rely on a path.
What you get
A governed workflow gives you four records.
- A plan you can read, before the work runs.
- A budget reservation before work. The reservation is an estimate. It is not a cap on a provider's invoice. Admission can refuse more work. Review held and uncertain exposure before you continue.
- An approval when it matters. Gated steps wait, with the context for the decision. BOSS proposes changes to itself as pull requests and config diffs, not as silent writes.
- A receipt after. The receipt and its dedupe key identify an attempt. A dedupe key does not make every provider idempotent. An ambiguous provider outcome needs reconciliation before a retry.
A failure is retried, dead-lettered, or escalated to a person. It is not dropped.
This is a release candidate, not a promise that every path is qualified.
No telemetry collector is set, so the daily heartbeat sends nothing until you set one (BOSS_TELEMETRY_URL, or in Govern › Sharing). "Improve BOSS" is off unless you turn it on. BOSS_TELEMETRY=off or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 sends nothing, heartbeat included. What a payload can contain.
The console, the Metatron terminal, the CLI, and MCP call the same API. How they fit.
Where to go next
