-
TLDR: Cloud in a Bottle is your open-source personal cloud: containerized apps, unified auth, good UX. Self-hosting should feel like using a smartphone that serves webapps, not a sysadmin side job.
-
I’m frustrated with the state of the digital world.
- … software we use is so misaligned with our own incentives
- intentionally addicting,
- loaded with ads,
- tracking you and selling your data,
- enshittifying
- … software we use is so misaligned with our own incentives
-
Software served from the cloud (think Google Docs vs Microsoft Word) delivers a great experience - no install, accessible on all your devices, immediate sharing/collaboration.
- … serve something in the cloud costs money, … open source authors naturally don’t want to pay to serve their free software to the world.
- … companies have a financial incentive fundamentally misaligned with our own.
-
… cloud software is centralized …
-
self-hosting exists already …
- sandstorm.io: (their article from 2014 makes basically the same argument I’m making here),
- long abandoned
- Nextcloud: slow and unreliable, and more enterprise-targeted now
- YunoHost: apps run directly on the host, no sandboxing. one insecure app compromises the entire server.
- Coolify: hosts containerized apps, but every app is an island with its own login and little integration with the host or other apps.
- sandstorm.io: (their article from 2014 makes basically the same argument I’m making here),
-
… something that you own, where finding and installing great apps is trivial …
- … logged into your instance, you’re automatically logged into all your apps - no separate accounts in each app.
- … interface to allow permissioned access to data and capabilities between different apps in your instance.
- … think of all the different APIs that Android or iOS provide to enable apps to deliver a great, integrated experience …
-
… open source, self-hostable, zero telemetry, and aims to be as simple and “magic-free” as possible.
-
… company I work for …
Sep 6th, 2026 by JD
- đź‘€
-
offer a managed version, … open-source/self-hosted path runs exactly the same code and will always be first-class.
Sep 6th, 2026 by JD
- Related vision I have with rotat.io (open Lovable ) … open tool with paid managed service.
- ”… open-source … will always be first class” … time has proven us that such an open promise cannot be trusted, it doesn’t matter for personal use, the license is open, but need to be analyzed for reselling …
-
-
For now, early users will likely need a bit of technical familiarity (or a coding agent) …
- … run on your instance (it’s really easy!)
Sep 6th, 2026 by JD
- “it’s really easy!” … is being contradicted by the beginning of the same sentence …
- … run on your instance (it’s really easy!)
-
… chicken and egg problem …
- without a broadly accessible way to self-host open source web software,
- audience for such software is small, and the available software is limited.
- without a broadly accessible way to self-host open source web software,