Sysadmin Guide

This guide covers self-hosting CleverThis on your own infrastructure. It is intended for platform engineers and DevOps teams responsible for deploying, configuring, and operating the CleverThis stack.

CleverThis can be deployed with Docker Compose (recommended for small teams and single-server setups) or with Helm on Kubernetes (recommended for production scale, HA, and multi-region). Both deployment paths use the same container images and environment variable configuration.

What's in this guide

• Requirements — hardware, OS, open ports, and software prerequisites
• Installation
  • Docker Compose — full single-server installation
  • Kubernetes — Helm chart deployment
• Configuration
  • Environment Variables — complete reference for all env vars
  • Providers — wiring LLM provider credentials
  • Stripe — billing and payment setup
• Auth
  • OAuth Setup — configuring Google and GitHub OAuth apps
  • Invite Codes — managing invite-only registration
• Monitoring — OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and SigNoz
• Upgrades — upgrade procedure and migration notes
• Backup & Restore — backing up and restoring CleverThis data