Deploy with Docker

ZAR ships a Dockerfile based on python:3.12-slim. It installs the system libraries tree-sitter and cryptography need, then runs the FastAPI app with uvicorn.

Build

docker build -t zar .

Run

Pass configuration as environment variables. The private key is easiest to inject inline:

docker run -p 8000:8000 \
  -e GITHUB_APP_ID=123456 \
  -e GITHUB_WEBHOOK_SECRET=your-strong-secret \
  -e GITHUB_PRIVATE_KEY="$(cat ./github-app.private-key.pem)" \
  -e ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-... \
  -e APP_ENV=production \
  -e SESSION_SECRET="$(python -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))')" \
  zar

The container serves on port 8000 (uvicorn app.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000). Put it behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy and point your GitHub App’s Webhook URL at https://YOUR_DOMAIN/github/webhook. By default this uses SQLite inside the container, which is ephemeral — fine for a trial, not for production. For anything real, mount a volume or use Postgres (below).

docker-compose

The repo includes a docker-compose.yml with a Redis service. A practical compose setup adds Postgres and your env file:

services:
  zar:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    env_file: .env
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql+asyncpg://zar:zar@db:5432/zar
      REDIS_URL: redis://redis:6379/0
    depends_on:
      - db
      - redis

  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: zar
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: zar
      POSTGRES_DB: zar
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    volumes:
      - redis-data:/data

volumes:
  pgdata:
  redis-data:

Run it:

docker compose up --build

Keep secrets in .env (referenced via env_file) and never commit it.

Persistence & scaling

Use Postgres for production; SQLite in a container is lost on redeploy unless you mount a volume.
If you run more than one ZAR replica, add a shared lock so replicas don’t double-process a repo’s events. See the scaling note.

Verify

curl -s http://localhost:8000/healthz
# {"ok": true}

Next steps

Self-hosting overview — registering the GitHub App.
Environment variables — full configuration.
Railway — a managed alternative.

Getting started

Concepts

Configuration

Features

Self-hosting

Deploy with Docker

Deploy with Docker

Build

Run

docker-compose

Persistence & scaling

Verify

Next steps

​Deploy with Docker

​Build

​Run

​docker-compose

​Persistence & scaling

​Verify

​Next steps

Deploy with Docker

Build

Run

docker-compose

Persistence & scaling

Verify

Next steps