Getting Started

Keel (the keel of a ship — the hidden structure that keeps everything aligned) is a self-hosted web dashboard for managing Docker environments — local or remote via SSH — from a single Go binary (~10MB, no external dependencies).

Prerequisites

Docker — local install or remote host with Docker via SSH
SSH key pair — required for remote targets
sudo — only for keel hosts setup (modifies /etc/hosts)

Install

curl -fsSL https://getkaze.dev/keel/install.sh | sudo bash

This installs the binary to ~/.local/bin/keel and creates the data directory at /var/lib/keel. The binary is owned by your user, enabling self-update from the dashboard without sudo. The installer automatically adds ~/.local/bin to your PATH (supports zsh, bash, and fish).

Start

Once installed, start the dashboard with a single command:

keel

Open http://localhost:60000 and you have a full dashboard with live status, logs, terminal, metrics, and container management.

What you get

Live Dashboard: real-time grid view of all containers with status polling
SSE Log Streaming: stream from docker logs or host-path files
Browser Terminal: full interactive PTY via WebSocket
Real-Time Metrics: CPU, memory, disk, load average, per-container stats
Remote Targets: manage remote Docker hosts via SSH tunnel
Dev Mode: mount local code with hot reload
Seeders: run data seeding scripts inside containers
Self-Update: update the binary from the dashboard or CLI
Config Editor: edit service JSON configs inline from the dashboard
Health Checks: HTTP or command-based monitoring with configurable intervals

Data directory

Platform	Default Path	Override
Linux	`/var/lib/keel/`	`KEEL_DIR` or `-keel-dir`
macOS	`~/.keel/`	`KEEL_DIR` or `-keel-dir`

/var/lib/keel/      # Linux (or ~/.keel/ on macOS)
  data/
    config.json           # global config (network, subnet)
    targets.json          # Docker targets (local + SSH)
    services/
      redis.json          # one file per container
      traefik.json
    seeders/
      mysql-init.json
    config/
      traefik/
        dynamic.yml       # Traefik routing rules (used by "keel hosts")
  state/
    target                # active target name
    ghcr-user             # GHCR credentials (chmod 600)
    ghcr-pat

Next steps

Usage: CLI commands and flags
Service Config: configure your containers
Remote Targets: manage remote Docker hosts