What exactly is Spunto Lite?

The Build pillar of Spunto — dev environments — collapsed into a single container you run on your own machine. Projects describe an environment (base image, devcontainer features, lifecycle hooks, ports); workers are disposable Docker containers built from that description, each with an IDE in the browser and a persistent terminal.

What license is Spunto Lite released under?

MIT. You can fork it, run it commercially, or vendor parts of it into something else — the only requirement is keeping the copyright notice. The container image is also published publicly on GitHub Container Registry.

How is Spunto Lite different from the hosted Spunto platform?

Lite is one machine and one pillar. The hosted platform runs sandboxes on machines you own (BYOC) or on Spunto Cloud, adds organizations, roles and delegated tasks on top of Build.

Is it safe to expose Spunto Lite to the internet?

No. There is no authentication in front of the control plane and it holds your Docker socket, so it belongs on localhost or a network you trust. Internet-facing, multi-user setups are what the hosted platform is for.

Can AI coding agents use Spunto Lite?

Yes — it is one of the main reasons it exists. Each worker is an isolated, disposable container with a real shell, a real editor and its own forwarded ports, which makes it a safe place to let a coding agent run and a cheap one to throw away.

Spunto Lite — open-source, self-hosted dev environments in one container

01 — What you geta control plane for throwaway environments

Not a dotfiles script. Not a hosted IDE.

A small app that turns “spin me up a clean environment for this” into a button, on hardware you already pay for — and turns it back into nothing when you’re done.

editor: code-server inside every workspace, on its own subdomain — a full IDE in a browser tab
terminal: persistent: it survives a page reload, and it's the same shell an agent would be given
projects: devcontainer-style specs: base image, features, extensions, ports, postCreate/postStart
versions: editing a project bumps its version and pre-builds the image, so the next launch is warm

your keys: ~/.ssh mounted read-only and injected, so git push keeps your identity
secrets: per project and per user, stored encrypted, landing in the environment at boot
storage: SQLite in one volume — no database service to run alongside it
routing: the same process reverse-proxies worker-<id>.localhost and hosts the terminal socket

02 — Three minutes, start to editorrun it, describe it, launch it

step 1

Run the container

One docker run with the Docker socket mounted — or the compose file above. Then open http://localhost. There is no account step, because there are no accounts.

$ docker run … ghcr.io/spuntodotnet/spunto-lite

step 2

Describe a project

Start from a template (Next.js, Vite, Astro, FastAPI, Express, docker-compose) or point it at your own repo and base image. Features, ports, hooks and secrets all live in the spec.

→ project spec saved · version 1

step 3

Launch a workspace

A sibling container boots from that spec, clones your repos, runs your hooks, and hands you an editor and a terminal on their own subdomain.

→ worker-a1b2c3.localhost · ready

if you prefer a file

Or the compose version.

Same thing, easier to keep next to whatever else you already run. The data volume holds the SQLite file — back that up and you’ve backed up the whole installation.

Source on GitHub Why we built it

docker-compose.yml

services:
  spunto-lite:
    image: ghcr.io/spuntodotnet/spunto-lite:latest
    ports: ["80:80"]
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - $HOME/.ssh:/host-ssh:ro
      - spunto-lite-data:/app/data

volumes:
  spunto-lite-data:

03 — What Lite deliberately isn'tsaid here rather than found later

Three things it won’t do.

None of these are on a roadmap. They’re the line between a tool you run on your laptop and a platform a team depends on, and drawing it clearly is the only way Lite gets to stay this small.

!No login screen. It holds your Docker socket, so keep it on localhost or a network you trust — never on the open internet.
!One machine, one person. No organisations, no roles, no sharing a workspace with a teammate.
!Dev environments only. No fleet-wide logs or stats — that’s Spunto Cloud.

lite or cloud — the whole difference

LiteCloud

Where it runsone machine you owna fleet of machines you own

Dev environments

Installone containernothing to install

Costfree — MITfree during beta

Accounts and teamsorgs, members, roles

Logs and statslive, across every machine

Auth in front of itGoogle OAuth, per-workspace access

The spec you write in Lite — image, features, hooks, ports — is the same shape Cloud uses, so moving up is re-creating a project, not a migration.

04 — Why it existsmostly this

Somewhere safe to let an agent run.

A coding agent needs a shell that can install things, a server it can start and a repo it can break. Giving it that on your laptop is how you end up with a mystery daemon and a corrupted database. Giving it a Lite workspace is just a container — its own network, its own ports, its own clone — that you delete when it’s done.

And because the whole thing is one container on your own machine, letting an agent try something costs nothing and reveals nothing.