Why
A laptop is a bad place for an agent to work. It sleeps, it throttles, it runs out of memory halfway through a build, and every agent stops the moment you close the lid. Parallel worktrees, headless browsers and three projects building at once make it worse.
The answer is a Linux server of your own, always on, reachable over SSH. Setting one up properly — a user that is not root, a firewall, runtimes, databases, tmux, a tunnel, the agents themselves — takes an evening, and keeping it right takes more. Pupitre does it for you, then stays as your window onto the machine.
What you get
- A server set up for you. Pupitre inspects the VPS you rent, says what fits and what is missing, hardens it, and installs what you tick.
- Your agents, working while you sleep. Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode and others run on the server, in the right folder, with the project's context and skills — on your own subscriptions.
- Your projects as URLs. Add a project by git URL or folder: Pupitre clones it, installs its dependencies, starts it, exposes it and shows its logs.
- Databases, runtimes and tools from a catalogue. Versions, settings and updates handled; uninstall in one click.
- Your editor, unchanged. VS Code, Cursor, Zed and the JetBrains IDEs open the server's folders as if they were local. The Claude and ChatGPT apps reach the server too.
- Terminals, backups, access control — and when something fails, the app shows the button that repairs it.
How it works
- Create an account — an email is enough.
- Download the app for macOS, Windows or Linux and link it to your account.
- Rent a VPS anywhere — Hetzner, netcup, OVH, Scaleway, DigitalOcean… Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04, 4 GB of RAM.
- Give the app its address, tick what you want, and watch it work.
Under the hood, the app talks to pupitred, a compiled Go agent it installs on the server.
What Pupitre promises
- We never connect to your server. Your laptop talks to it, never the other way round; no inbound connection from the platform, ever.
- Your keys never leave your computer. The SSH key is made on your laptop, and we hold no copy.
- Your code and conversations never go through Pupitre. Agents talk to the model provider you chose, on your account.
- The machine stays yours. Full rights, install anything, log in without the app. If you leave, the server keeps running as a normal server.
More on the security page.
Free up to 3 servers
The hosted platform is free for every organization up to 3 servers: no card, no trial, no time limit, and the whole catalogue included — there is no paid edition. React Consulting, which sponsors Pupitre, pays for the hosting.
Beyond 3 servers, an organization needs a licence, granted on request at [email protected]. No payment is taken.
Source-available, not open source
The code is public under the Apache License 2.0 with the Commons Clause License Condition v1.0 (LICENSE, NOTICE), licensed by React Consulting SARL AU (Morocco). That makes Pupitre source-available — not "open source" in the sense of the Open Source Initiative.
You can:
- read, use and modify the code, for yourself or your company;
- build it and run it, including a platform of your own (self-hosting);
- redistribute it, modified or not, with the licence, the Commons Clause and the notices.
You cannot sell Pupitre, or a product or service whose value derives entirely or substantially from it — a host charging for a Pupitre installation, a paid "managed Pupitre", or a resold build of the app.
The name Pupitre and its logo are not covered by the licence.
Build from source
Bun only (the version is pinned in package.json), Node 22 or later, and Go 1.26 or later for the agent.
bun install
bun dev # site on :4321, console on :3000
bun run dev:desktop # the desktop app, pointed at the local console
bun run build:agent # pupitred, every architecture
bun run lint
bun run check:types
bun run test
bun run build
No account, secret or paid service is needed: bun dev first runs dev:prepare, which writes .env.local from .env.example, generates the per-machine secrets and creates the local database. What needs a shared secret (mail, social sign-in, storage) stays off; maintainers fill those values from 1Password. The agent is tried on a disposable server in a container, never on a machine you care about.
The full guide — prerequisites, every part of the project, the test server, the checks — is docs/getting-started.md.
apps/site Astro — pupitre.studio: marketing, public docs, blog, legal pages
apps/web TanStack Start on Cloudflare Workers — app.pupitre.studio: console, /api/v1, /api/auth
apps/desktop Electron — the app
apps/agent Go — pupitred, the agent installed on the server
packages/db Prisma schema, D1 SQL migrations, generated clients
packages/auth Better Auth configuration and clients
packages/api the Elysia /api/v1 app, its client and test harness
packages/shared contracts shared across apps: agent protocol, catalogue, licences, legal
packages/design monochrome CSS tokens and Tailwind preset
docs/ product, architecture, contracts, decisions (in French)
Read next:
docs/README.md — the map of the documentationdocs/architecture.md — the rules that never move: the customer's server is the source of truth, no private key leaves the laptop, no inbound connection to the serverCLAUDE.md — the rules of the monorepo and the way work is done here
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome — read CONTRIBUTING.md first. Pull requests go to staging, never to main, and a contribution is accepted under the licence of the repository, as section 5 of the Apache License states. Everyone taking part follows the code of conduct.
