rcourtman
3420fcdee4
The 2026-09-01 Patrol assessment could not answer four questions from telemetry: what share of Patrol installs run local versus cloud models, what Patrol costs an install per month (issue 1789 estimates ~104k input tokens per full run at ~5.5 runs a day, above the Pro fee on non-Flash tiers), how the 240 of 255 fleet investigations that produced no plan actually ended, and which effective Patrol mode an install runs. Schema v17 adds closed buckets only. ai_provider_class classifies the Patrol model route (none, local, cloud_byok, cloud_subscription, hosted_quickstart, unknown) with a syntactic private-host check on custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints; it never resolves DNS or carries a provider, model, endpoint, or account. pulse_intelligence_patrol_autonomy_level is the effective level after licence and Autopilot gating. The two token fields bucket the existing local usage ledger's Patrol events, so exact counts and prices stay on the install. Thirteen investigation outcome counters partition the findings already counted as investigated, one bucket per finding, adding no finding, resource, or session identity. The strings are never omitted, so an empty value can only mean a pre-v17 sender; the receiver stores those as unknown. PRIVACY.md, its shipped mirror, the Settings preview interface, and the security-privacy and api-contracts subsystem notes carry the disclosure, and the coverage gap is registered in status.json. The agent-lifecycle and storage-recovery contracts name internal/api under their extension points, so both record that this telemetry is adjacent adoption analytics and never agent or storage state. The stable E2E tier pins the public schema version, so the disclosure spec moves to 17, and the Settings preview interface change carries a browser receipt from a scratch build of this tree at 1280x800 and 390x844. status.json also drops an identical duplicate of the ai-provider-guided-setup coverage-gap record that two merges each appended, which the private governance audit rejects. The bucket for a legacy config still pointing at the retired Pulse-hosted route is named hosted_legacy: the shipped privacy document discloses the vocabulary verbatim and the frontend copy contract keeps that document free of the retired hosted quickstart wording, so the telemetry package now pins the vocabulary at the source.
Pulse
Infrastructure monitoring that finds what needs attention.
Pulse is a self-hosted monitoring workspace for Proxmox, Docker, Kubernetes, TrueNAS, physical and virtual machines, and early-access VMware vSphere environments. It combines live infrastructure state, history, alerts, recovery visibility, and scheduled health checks without requiring a conventional enterprise monitoring stack.
Why Pulse
- It watches between visits. Alerts and Pulse Patrol find failed backups, capacity pressure, restart loops, unhealthy containers, clock drift, and other problems that dashboards cannot surface when nobody is looking.
- It keeps each platform familiar. Proxmox, Docker, Kubernetes, TrueNAS, vSphere, and machines have dedicated views, backed by one shared resource model for search, alerts, history, and investigation.
- It stays operator-controlled. Credentials are encrypted at rest, API tokens are scoped, agent commands are disabled by default, and governed fixes require the configured policy and approval path.
Platform coverage
| Platform | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Proxmox VE, PBS, and PMG | Nodes, guests, storage, backups, replication, Ceph, mail gateways, and alerts |
| Docker and Podman | Hosts, containers, Compose projects, Swarm services, health, images, and updates |
| Kubernetes | Clusters, nodes, workloads, pods, services, storage, and events through the unified agent |
| TrueNAS SCALE and CORE | Pools, datasets, disks, snapshots, replication tasks, apps, VMs, and alerts |
| Linux, Windows, and macOS machines | Host health, filesystems, networking, temperatures, RAID, and availability through the unified agent |
| VMware vSphere | Early-access inventory, hosts, clusters, VMs, datastores, networks, snapshots, and recovery context; validate against your own vCenter before production use |
Platform pages keep storage and recovery information beside the infrastructure it belongs to. Alerts, Actions, and Patrol remain cross-platform views.
Patrol: monitoring that does rounds
Pulse Patrol runs scheduled checks across the current state and recent history of your infrastructure. Community installations can use a local model or their own AI provider for watch-only analysis. Pulse Pro adds investigation and policy-bound fixes with approval, verification, and an audit trail.
Pulse also includes an interactive Assistant and an MCP adapter for external clients such as Claude Code and OpenCode. Both sit on top of the same scoped inventory, metrics, alert, storage, and governed-action contracts.
Quick start
Choose an exact version from the latest release and keep that version pinned during installation.
Docker
docker run -d \
--name pulse \
-p 7655:7655 \
-v pulse_data:/data \
-e PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_METHOD=docker_run \
--restart unless-stopped \
rcourtman/pulse:vX.Y.Z
Open http://<your-ip>:7655 and follow the bootstrap-token setup. Docker host
monitoring is provided by the unified agent; the Pulse server container does
not need the Docker socket.
Proxmox LXC, Linux, and Kubernetes
The installer is signed. Verify install.sh against the pinned
pulse-installer key before running it:
export PULSE_VERSION=vX.Y.Z
curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse/releases/download/${PULSE_VERSION}/install.sh"
curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse/releases/download/${PULSE_VERSION}/install.sh.sshsig"
ssh-keygen -Y verify \
-f <(printf '%s\n' 'pulse-installer namespaces="pulse-install" ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIMZd/DaH+BldzOkq1A8KVTcFk73nAyrE8aJOyf7i00jm pulse-installer') \
-I pulse-installer \
-n pulse-install \
-s install.sh.sshsig < install.sh
bash install.sh --version "${PULSE_VERSION}"
rm -f install.sh install.sh.sshsig
The GitHub installer installs the Pulse server. Install and upgrade agents (including v5-to-v6 agent upgrades) with the per-host command generated under Settings → Infrastructure → Install on a host.
Do you need an agent?
Often not. Proxmox VE, PBS, and PMG are monitored through the Proxmox API with a read-only token, so nothing runs on the host and the generated setup script creates a privilege-separated monitoring user. Install the unified agent only where you want data the platform API cannot provide, such as host SMART health, temperatures, Docker hosts, or standalone machines.
The agent is operator-controlled by design. Command execution is off by
default, the local listener binds to localhost, and generated systemd units
ship hardened. On Linux, the installer's --least-privilege profile runs the
service as a dedicated non-root user, with optional scoped sudo grants for
the few collectors that need elevation. The
agent security model documents exactly what the
agent can and cannot do at each privilege level.
Important
GitHub release assets and
rcourtman/pulseimages are Community builds. Relay, Pro, and eligible legacy customers should use the private image or Linux archive provided by the Pulse download portal. Replacing a private Pro runtime with a public Community build removes its private runtime hooks.
Editions
- Community — self-hosted monitoring, seven days of metric history, core SSO, update alerts, and Patrol with your own provider or local model.
- Relay — Community plus secure remote web access, Pulse Mobile pairing, push notifications, and fourteen days of history.
- Pro — Relay plus Patrol investigation, governed fixes, ninety days of history, centralized agent profiles, RBAC, audit logging, and reporting.
- MSP — for managed service providers: one Pulse Account running many client workspaces, each with an isolated Pulse runtime — separate dashboards, alerts, users, audit history, and reports. Free sixty-day two-client evaluation at Pulse for MSPs.
Core self-hosted monitoring is not gated by monitored-system or child-resource volume. See the runtime-aligned capability reference and current plans for details.
Documentation
- Install and deployment
- Production deployment and security
- Upgrade from Pulse v5
- Configuration
- Platform and agent guides
- Pulse Intelligence
- Security and privacy
- Code signing policy
- Troubleshooting
- API reference and architecture
Localized getting started guides: Deutsch · Español
Development
Pulse uses Go 1.26 and a SolidJS/TypeScript frontend. The managed development
runtime starts the frontend at http://127.0.0.1:5173 and proxies API and
WebSocket traffic to the backend on port 7655.
npm ci
npm --prefix frontend-modern ci
npm run dev
Useful checks:
go test ./...
npm --prefix frontend-modern test
npm --prefix frontend-modern run type-check
python3 scripts/check_public_docs.py
See CONTRIBUTING.md before investing in a code change. Pulse uses an issue-first contribution process and does not normally accept unsolicited pull requests.
Community and support
- Ask questions in GitHub Discussions.
- Report reproducible bugs through GitHub Issues.
- Home Assistant users can use the community-maintained Pulse add-ons.
- If Pulse is useful to you, support its development through GitHub Sponsors or Ko-fi.
License
Everything in this repository is licensed under the MIT License. There is no dual licensing and no commercial or source-available code here.
Pulse Pro is a separate commercial product, built from private sources and distributed through pulserelay.pro. Its use is governed by the Terms of Service, which apply to that product only, not to anything in this repository.