Self-Hosting

h4ckbot is designed to run entirely on your own infrastructure. This page covers production deployment with Docker Compose.

Licence key required

Self-hosting uses the same model that runs on h4ckbot.com. Access is not open — you need an approved licence key before you can run a production instance.

Email artur.chlebicki@volue.com with a brief description of your use case. We reply within a few days.

Prerequisites

Docker Engine 24+ and Docker Compose v2
An approved h4ckbot licence key (see above)
A domain with HTTPS (Nginx Proxy Manager or Caddy recommended)
At least 2 GB RAM and 10 GB disk

Environment variables

Copy backend/.env.example to backend/.env and fill in:

# Required
H4CKBOT_MODEL_KEY=<your-licence-key>
SECRET_KEY=<64-char random hex>
DATABASE_URL=postgresql+asyncpg://postgres:yourpassword@postgres:5432/pentest_ai

# Optional — email verification
SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USER=noreply@example.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=...
EMAIL_FROM=noreply@example.com

# Optional — analytics
NEXT_PUBLIC_PLAUSIBLE_DOMAIN=your-domain.com

SECRET_KEY

Generate with python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))". Rotating this key invalidates all existing sessions.

Starting the stack

docker compose up -d
docker compose exec backend alembic upgrade head

The first build compiles the Next.js frontend — allow 3–5 minutes.

Reverse proxy (Nginx)

Point your reverse proxy to the frontend container on port 3000. Ensure these headers are forwarded:

proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

SSE (streaming chat) requires proxy_buffering off and an elevated proxy_read_timeout (120s+).

Health checks

curl https://your-domain.com/api/health
# → {"status":"ok"}