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The Desk

Requirements

Before you install The Desk, make sure your host meets these requirements.

Host

Section titled “Host”
  • Docker Engine 24+ and the Docker Compose plugin (docker compose, not the legacy docker-compose binary).
  • A Linux host is recommended. Anything that runs a recent Docker Engine works.

Network & TLS

Section titled “Network & TLS”
  • A domain name pointing at your host.
  • A TLS-terminating reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy, Traefik, …) in front of the stack. TLS/HTTPS is your responsibility — the containers speak plain HTTP.
  • Your proxy must forward WebSocket upgrade requests to the reverb service, so real-time features (new messages, typing, presence) work.

See Reverse proxy & TLS for concrete proxy configuration.

Mail

Section titled “Mail”

The Desk sends transactional email (workspace invitations, and — if you enable it — email verification), so you need working SMTP credentials. Invitations are the main dependency out of the box; email verification is off by default but requires working SMTP once you turn it on.

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

The Desk is modest to run. A small VPS (2 vCPU / 2 GB RAM) comfortably hosts a team; scale up as your message volume and search index grow. The full list of services and what each one does is in the Architecture reference.