pad/docs/deployment.md

Deployment Guide

Pad is a single Go binary with an embedded web UI. It supports SQLite (default) for single-node deployments and PostgreSQL + Redis for production multi-node setups.

Architecture

                    ┌─────────────────┐
                    │  Reverse Proxy  │
                    │  (Caddy/nginx)  │
                    └────────┬────────┘
                             │ :443
                    ┌────────▼────────┐
                    │      Pad        │
                    │   Go binary     │
                    │  (web UI + API) │
                    └──┬──────────┬───┘
                       │          │
              ┌────────▼──┐  ┌───▼────────┐
              │ PostgreSQL │  │   Redis    │
              │ (storage)  │  │ (pub/sub)  │
              └────────────┘  └────────────┘

• Pad serves the REST API and embedded SvelteKit web UI on a single port (default: 7777)
• PostgreSQL stores all data (workspaces, items, users, activity). SQLite works for single-node.
• Redis carries real-time events, watch/push notifications, and the shared session-presence registry across multiple Pad instances. Optional for single-node.

Quick Start with Docker Compose

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/PerpetualSoftware/pad.git
cd pad

# Start everything (Pad + PostgreSQL + Redis)
docker compose up -d

# Check status
docker compose ps

# View logs
docker compose logs -f pad

Access the web UI at http://localhost:7777. On first visit, you'll be prompted to create an admin account.

Production Docker Compose

# Use the production overlay for resource limits and secure settings
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Edit docker-compose.prod.yml to set your domain, email credentials, and database password.

Environment Variables

All configuration is via environment variables or a config file (~/.pad/config.toml / /data/config.toml).

Core

Variable	Default	Description
PAD_HOST	127.0.0.1	Listen address (0.0.0.0 for Docker/production)
PAD_PORT	7777	Listen port
PAD_URL	—	Public-facing base URL (e.g., https://pad.example.com). Used for invitation, password-reset, and share-link emails. Required when PAD_HOST=0.0.0.0 — otherwise emailed links point at http://0.0.0.0:port and are unreachable to recipients.
PUBLIC_URL	—	Alternative to PAD_URL using the generic env-var convention. Server-side only — does not affect CLI mode, does not influence the CLI's API endpoint, and is not persisted to config.toml. Precedence: PAD_URL > PUBLIC_URL > constructed http://host:port.
PAD_DATA_DIR	~/.pad	Data directory for SQLite DB, logs, and config
PAD_LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level: debug, info, warn, error
PAD_MODE	local	Mode: local, remote, cloud

Database

Variable	Default	Description
PAD_DB_DRIVER	sqlite	Database driver: sqlite or postgres
PAD_DB_PATH	~/.pad/pad.db	SQLite database path (ignored when using PostgreSQL)
PAD_DATABASE_URL	—	PostgreSQL connection string (required when PAD_DB_DRIVER=postgres)

Real-time Events

Variable	Default	Description
PAD_REDIS_URL	—	Redis URL for cross-instance pub/sub and the session-presence registry. Without Redis, SSE events, watch notifications, and session presence are all in-process only.
PAD_SSE_MAX_CONNECTIONS	1000	Global maximum SSE connections
PAD_SSE_MAX_PER_WORKSPACE	100	Per-workspace maximum SSE connections

Redis configuration notes

Pad's Redis integration assumes a single Redis node — redis://…, not a cluster. Both event buses and the session-presence registry use flat key names and a non-cluster client; pointing Pad at a Redis Cluster is not supported.

Avoid an evicting maxmemory-policy for Pad's Redis. docker-compose.prod.yml sets noeviction for this reason; the plain docker-compose.yml keeps allkeys-lru on its 64 MB dev instance, where the consequence below is a momentary annoyance rather than a lost instruction — change it too if you run that file in anger.

Under an evicting policy Redis may drop live session-presence entries under memory pressure. Nothing can distinguish that from a TTL lapsing, so a connected agent session briefly disappears from the picker and a push targeted at it reports delivered_sessions: 0. It self-repairs on the session's next 30-second renewal, and Pad's keyspace is small — a few hundred bytes per connected session plus two counters — so there is nothing to gain by evicting it.

If push stops finding a session (on-call)

The most likely Redis-related symptom is a transient write failure while registering a session. The agent's event stream stays up — the connection is never refused over a registry problem — but the session is absent from the shared registry, so:

• it does not appear in GET /api/v1/sessions or the web picker, and
• a push targeted at it returns 200 pushed:true with delivered_sessions: 0 and skips publication, so the instruction is not delivered.

What you'll see: session presence: failed to register session or failed to renew session entry warnings (rate-limited to one per minute, carrying failures_since_last_log — a large count means the replica, a small one means a single session), and the session missing from the listing.

What to do: restore Redis connectivity, capacity, or ACLs. Registration self-heals — each session's renewal re-writes its full entry, so an affected session reappears within ~30 seconds without reconnecting. Confirm it is listed again before re-sending anything.

What NOT to do: do not blindly re-send. A targeted push reporting delivered_sessions: 0 is safe to resend, because the server skipped the publish. A broadcast is always published, and a 502 push_unconfirmed means the outcome is unknown — re-sending either can deliver a second instruction the agent acts on twice. Only re-send what the server told you it skipped.

Upgrading a multi-instance deployment

PAD_REDIS_URL now also backs the session-presence registry — the list of which agent sessions are connected, which pad push and the web UI's "Push to agent" picker read to decide where a push goes. Previously that registry was per-process even when Redis was configured, so a push aimed at a session held by another replica was silently dropped.

During a rolling upgrade, old and new replicas disagree about presence. An old replica has only its own connections in view, so a push it answers cannot see a session held on a new replica, and GET /api/v1/sessions returns a different list depending on which replica answers. A TARGETED push reports this honestly — delivered_sessions: 0, and the publish is skipped, so nothing was sent — but the instruction is not delivered.

This is the same behaviour every replica had before this build, so the rollout is not a regression; it is a window in which the fix is only partly in effect. Two ways to avoid the window:

• Blue/green — bring up the new replicas, cut traffic over, retire the old ones. No mixed period.
• Drain first — scale old replicas out of the load balancer and let agent monitors reconnect (pad watch --stream reconnects on its own) before serving pushes from the new set.

If neither is practical, a rolling upgrade is still safe: nothing is corrupted and no migration is needed. Targeted pushes may report delivered_sessions: 0 and go undelivered until every replica runs the new build; those are safe to re-send once the rollout completes, because a targeted miss skips the publish entirely.

That safety does not extend to broadcasts. A broadcast push is always published, on old and new replicas alike, and the shared notification bus carries it across instances regardless of which registry the answering replica used — so a broadcast reporting 0 during the rollout may well have been delivered. Re-sending one is a second instruction the receiving agent will act on twice. Only re-send a push the server told you it skipped. There is no Redis or database migration; the registry's keys are transient and expire on their own TTL.

Security

Variable	Default	Description
PAD_SECURE_COOKIES	false	Set Secure flag on session cookies (requires TLS)
PAD_CORS_ORIGINS	—	Comma-separated allowed CORS origins

Email (Optional)

Email enables sending workspace invitation links. Without it, users can still join via CLI invite codes.

Variable	Default	Description
PAD_MAILEROO_API_KEY	—	Maileroo sending API key
PAD_EMAIL_FROM	noreply@getpad.dev	Sender email address
PAD_EMAIL_FROM_NAME	Pad	Sender display name

Password recovery (when email is not configured)

Without an email provider, the web "Forgot password" flow can't send a reset link — the page says so and points users at the host-side recovery below. Recover a locked-out account from the server host (the same trust model as pad auth setup — shell access to the box):

# Print a single-use reset link (open it in a browser to choose a new password)
pad auth reset-password admin@example.com

# Or set a random temporary password, printed to the terminal (headless boxes).
# Log in with it, then change it immediately — all existing sessions are signed out.
pad auth reset-password admin@example.com --temp-password

This calls a loopback-only endpoint (POST /api/v1/auth/local-reset): it needs no login (you're locked out, after all), but it only works for a direct request from the server itself — proxied or remote requests are refused, and it's disabled entirely in cloud mode.

Alternatively, if a user submits the web reset form, the server logs the reset path on a non-cloud instance with no email configured:

password reset generated (email not configured) ... reset_path=/reset-password/<token>

Open <base-url>/reset-password/<token> to finish the reset by hand.

Deployment Options

Single Binary (SQLite)

The simplest deployment — one binary, one file for the database.

# Download or build
make build

# Run directly
PAD_HOST=0.0.0.0 ./pad server start

# Or install as a systemd service (see below)

Best for: single-user, small teams, evaluations.

Docker Compose (PostgreSQL + Redis)

See Quick Start above. This is the recommended setup for teams.

Kubernetes

Manifests are in deploy/k8s/. Apply them in order:

# Create namespace
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/namespace.yaml

# Configure secrets (edit first!)
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/secret.yaml

# Deploy
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/configmap.yaml
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/deployment.yaml
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/service.yaml
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/ingress.yaml
kubectl apply -f deploy/k8s/hpa.yaml

Prerequisites:

• External PostgreSQL (e.g., AWS RDS, Cloud SQL, managed PG)
• External Redis (e.g., ElastiCache, Memorystore)
• Ingress controller (nginx-ingress or similar)
• TLS certificates (cert-manager recommended)

Systemd Service

# /etc/systemd/system/pad.service
[Unit]
Description=Pad
After=network.target postgresql.service redis.service

[Service]
Type=simple
User=pad
Group=pad
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/pad server start
Environment=PAD_HOST=0.0.0.0
Environment=PAD_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/pad
Environment=PAD_DB_DRIVER=postgres
Environment=PAD_DATABASE_URL=postgres://pad:secret@localhost:5432/pad
Environment=PAD_REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now pad

Reverse Proxy

Pad needs a reverse proxy for TLS termination. SSE connections require specific proxy settings to avoid buffering.

Caddy (Recommended)

Caddy handles TLS automatically. See deploy/Caddyfile:

pad.example.com {
    reverse_proxy pad:7777 {
        flush_interval -1
    }
}

nginx

See deploy/nginx.conf. Critical settings for SSE:

location /api/v1/events {
    proxy_buffering off;
    proxy_cache off;
    proxy_read_timeout 86400s;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Connection "";
}

Monitoring

Pad exposes Prometheus metrics at /metrics (unauthenticated). Key metrics:

Metric	Type	Description
pad_http_requests_total	counter	Total HTTP requests by method, path, status
pad_http_request_duration_seconds	histogram	Request latency
pad_http_response_size_bytes	histogram	Response body sizes
pad_sse_connections_active	gauge	Current SSE connections
pad_eventbus_publish_total	counter	Events published
pad_eventbus_subscribers	gauge	Active event subscribers
pad_db_open_connections	gauge	Database connection pool stats

Health Check

curl http://localhost:7777/api/v1/health
# {"status":"ok"}

Upgrading

Pad releases a new binary roughly weekly. Migrations run automatically at startup — only the ones your database is missing are applied, and each one commits atomically, so a failed migration rolls back cleanly and is retried on the next boot.

Only ever move forward. A newer binary can migrate an older database; an older binary cannot understand a newer schema. Pad enforces this with a schema-ahead guard: if the binary finds a database that carries migrations it doesn't ship (the signature of a downgrade — a rolled-back brew formula, an older Docker tag, a redeployed prior binary), it refuses to start instead of silently running old code against a newer schema and corrupting data.

database schema is newer than this pad binary: the database has N migration(s)
this binary doesn't ship (...) ... This almost always means the binary was
DOWNGRADED (e.g. brew/docker rollback) ... Upgrade pad back to a build that
includes those migrations, or ... re-run with `pad start --force`.

• Recover by reinstalling the newer binary (brew upgrade pad, pull the newer Docker tag, redeploy the newer image).
• Override — only if you have intentionally downgraded and accept the data-corruption risk — with pad start --force or PAD_ALLOW_SCHEMA_AHEAD=1.

Pre-migration snapshot (SQLite)

When a SQLite-backed instance has pending migrations, Pad copies the database file to pad.db.pre-<version> (next to the DB) before applying them. If an upgrade goes wrong, stop the server and copy that file back over pad.db. It is a convenience net, not a substitute for backups — take a real backup first (see backup.md). The copy is best-effort: if it can't be written (read-only volume, full disk) the server logs a warning and proceeds, so keep your own backups regardless.

PostgreSQL is not snapshotted this way — take a pg_dump or provider snapshot before upgrading (see backup.md).

Recommended flow

# 1. Back up (SQLite shown; pg_dump for Postgres — see backup.md)
pad db backup -o pad-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).db

# 2. Stop, install the new binary, restart. Migrations + the pre-migration
#    snapshot run automatically on start.
brew upgrade pad     # or: docker pull, binary download, systemctl restart pad

# 3. Verify
pad --version
curl -s http://localhost:7777/api/v1/health   # {"status":"ok"}

Production Checklist

• Database: PostgreSQL configured with PAD_DB_DRIVER=postgres
• Redis: Connected for multi-instance events, notifications, and session presence (PAD_REDIS_URL), on a non-evicting maxmemory-policy
• TLS: Reverse proxy with valid certificates
• Secure cookies: PAD_SECURE_COOKIES=true (requires TLS)
• Public URL: PAD_URL set to your public-facing domain
• CORS: PAD_CORS_ORIGINS set if serving from a different domain
• Backups: PostgreSQL backup strategy in place (see docs/backup.md)
• Monitoring: Prometheus scraping /metrics
• Admin account: Created via pad auth setup or web UI on first visit
• Email (optional): Maileroo configured for invitation emails
• Resource limits: Set in Docker Compose or K8s manifests
• Log level: PAD_LOG_LEVEL=info (use debug only for troubleshooting)