Building the easiest way to self-host any project on a VPS

ModulesGarden

Our PanelAlpha team released PanelAlpha Engine 2.0 last week, and we'd really like to hear what you think about the direction we're taking with it.

The whole point of Engine is to turn a VPS into a safe environment where self-hosting projects is as simple as possible. Version 2.0 is the first big step in that direction: you install Engine on your VPS with a single command, connect Claude or any other AI agent you enjoy using, and then manage all the everyday work simply by asking for what you need in natural language.

At the moment Engine can already handle the essential tasks like:

• deploy any project from Git or files
• get instant preview URLs with optional password protection
• keep live and staging separate
• automate backups with easy restore
• monitor projects and check visitor stats
• keep each project isolated in its own Docker container
• manage firewall and WAF rules per project
• handle domains, SSL, cron, FTP/SFTP, databases and logs
• connect Cloudflare for DNS, Tunnels and caching

A big part of what we're trying to solve comes from the change in how people build software now. Someone can put together a working project with Claude or another AI tool in a matter of hours, but getting it onto their own server is still a completely different job. At the same time, there are tons of great open source projects out there that people would happily self-host if running them didn't mean taking on all the server work as well. We want Engine to be the #1 solution in both cases.

Engine 2.0 is fully open source, so we want the direction to stay open to people with very different ways of building and running software. So we're genuinely curious what your first reaction is. Would you actually manage a VPS through AI? How simple would Engine have to be for you to seriously consider using it?

We're interested in the doubts just as much as the positive feedback. If you think we're missing something, or would take this in a different direction, we'd genuinely like to hear it.

PanelAlpha Engine: https://engine.panelalpha.com
GitHub: https://github.com/panelalpha/engine