Supbuddy docs

Run multiple Supabase projects at once on one Mac, each with its own custom local domain.

Getting started

There are two ways to run Supbuddy. Use the macOS desktop app (steps below), or the command-line interface, which runs on macOS and Linux. For the CLI, install it with npx supbuddy@latest and jump to Command-line interface. The app and the CLI share the same state, so you can use either or both.

1. Install

Download the latest .dmg from the download page. Drag Supbuddy.app into /Applications and launch it. Supbuddy is signed and notarized; macOS will not show a Gatekeeper warning. Requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1/M2/M3/M4, arm64). The desktop app is macOS-only in v2, but the headless CLI runs on Linux too. See Command-line interface.

2. Trust the local Certificate Authority

Caddy mints its local CA the first time it actually serves a site, so the cert only exists once you have at least one enabled mapping and the proxy running — an empty proxy never generates it. With that in place, open the app and click Install (the first-launch prompt, or Settings → Network later). Supbuddy adds the CA (Caddy's internal PKI at ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/caddy-data/caddy/pki/authorities/local/root.crt) to your System keychain via sudo security add-trusted-cert; macOS asks for your password once. Caddy does not self-install trust (the generated Caddyfile sets skip_install_trust), so this button is what makes the padlock green — fully quit and reopen your browser afterward to pick it up. Every Supbuddy domain then gets HTTPS with no per-domain prompts or warnings. (On Windows the install is manual: Supbuddy shows the PowerShell Import-Certificate … -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\Root command to run as Administrator.)

Caddy names its root by year, so each yearly rotation (or a data wipe) leaves a same-name root behind with a different key. On every Install, Supbuddy first removes any stale Caddy Local Authority roots whose fingerprint doesn't match the current one, then adds the current root — leftover mismatched roots otherwise make Firefox-family browsers fail with SEC_ERROR_BAD_SIGNATURE.

Firefox, Zen, and Brave keep their own certificate store that Supbuddy can't reach (they don't consult the System keychain). After a CA change, either delete any stale Caddy Local Authority entries from the browser's own certificate manager and re-import the new root, or — on Firefox/Zen — set security.enterprise_roots.enabled to true in about:config so the browser reads the System keychain.

If Supbuddy detects an AI tool that ships its own JavaScript runtime (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue, Codex CLI, OpenCode, etc.) it will also offer to enable Bundled-runtime trust in the same first-run prompt. Those tools don't read the system Keychain (they carry their own Mozilla CA bundle), so without this setup the first OAuth/MCP connection to a *.test URL fails with unable to get local issuer certificate. Enable it once and Supbuddy keeps it in sync (including across yearly Caddy CA rotation). See the Bundled-runtime trust section under Settings → General for details.

If you skip the prompt, you can re-trigger it any time from the Settings → Network tab.

3. Add your first project

Click Add project in the Configure tab and pick a project root folder (the one with package.json and/or supabase/config.toml). Supbuddy scans it and creates auto-mapped subdomains based on what it finds:

• Supabase Kong → api.<project>.test
• Supabase Studio → studio.<project>.test
• Supabase Inbucket / Mailpit → mail.<project>.test
• Each detected app (Next.js, Vite, etc.) → <app-name>.<project>.test

The default TLD is .test. You can change it project-wide in Settings → General → Default TLD.

.local is fine again, from 3.5.18. Earlier versions made every managed domain resolve slowly — a name resolved in milliseconds once and then stalled five seconds per concurrent lookup, so curl, a single fetch and dig all looked healthy while any page issuing several requests at once failed with what looked like a connect timeout on the proxy. The advice used to be to move off .local, on the grounds that macOS reserves it for multicast DNS (RFC 6762). That was only half right, and the half that mattered was ours: Supbuddy's DNS server answered only A for managed domains and forwarded the IPv6 (AAAA) lookup to the upstream resolver, which never answers for a local name — so no reply was sent at all and the client waited out its own timeout. A name on a non-reserved suffix stalled identically (5003 ms against .local's 5002 ms), which is what proved the suffix was not the cause. Supbuddy now answers AAAA itself with ::1; because that is a positive answer it also satisfies macOS's multicast rule, so .local resolves in single-digit milliseconds like any other suffix. (A client that prefers IPv6 is refused on [::1]:443 and falls back to IPv4 in about 3 ms — there is deliberately no IPv6 redirect, because one was tried and it silently broke the backend HTTPS port.) There is no need to rename your domains. doctor still ships dns-local-tld-mdns-stall as a canary — if it fires on 3.5.18 or newer, check supbuddy version first, since an updated app can still be attached to an older daemon.

4. Start the proxy

Toggle the project on. Supbuddy starts Caddy on port 8443 (HTTPS) and starts its built-in DNS server on port 5353. If you want real ports 80/443 instead of 8080/8443, enable port forwarding in Settings → Network. Supbuddy inserts a pfctl redirect rule into /etc/pf.conf (asks for sudo once) and reports whether the redirect is actually being enforced via a live 443 probe — not merely that the rule is on disk. If port forwarding is on but 443 won't connect, see Port forwarding is on but 443 won't connect.

If the one-time sudo prompt is cancelled or fails, Supbuddy no longer aborts the start: Caddy still comes up and HTTPS keeps working on the high port (8443), and the proxy shows a degraded error state with a Retry so you can re-run the privileged setup. The CA is still generated in this state.

Core concepts

Four things to understand:

• Project: a folder you registered. Holds detected apps (Next.js, Vite, etc.), detected services (Supabase stack, Docker Compose services), and a list of mappings.
• Mapping: a domain → port pair (e.g. api.acme.test → 54321). Auto-generated mappings are tied to a detected service or app; you can also create manual ones.
• Isolation mode: per-project. One of:
  • thin (lightweight, the default for newly registered projects): still your host Docker (no nested containers, no DinD), but Supbuddy gives each project its own port block and a unique Compose project_id, written into that project's supabase/config.toml. That's what lets several Supabase projects run at once on the shared daemon, each reached by name (api.<project>.test, studio.<project>.test). Apps bind a per-project loopback IP (127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.3, …) so every project's dev servers keep their canonical ports — each project gets its own :3000. Start dev servers with supbuddy run -- <dev command> so they bind that IP. Supbuddy owns those config.toml keys while the project is thin and restores them the moment you switch back to host.
  • host: everything shares 127.0.0.1 and the stock ports. Dev-server ports collide across projects, and only one host-mode Supabase project can run at a time (the standard supabase start constraint). Use host only when the project's Supabase stack is already running on the host independently of Supbuddy (you run supabase start yourself and don't want Supbuddy re-porting config.toml). MCP registration (register_project) detects that case and keeps such projects on host automatically; in the app's Add-project dialog, pick Host in the Environment section yourself.
• Active vs inactive: any project can be "active" (proxied + reachable) or inactive. Inactive projects keep their state, so flipping them on is a few seconds. Run as many active projects as you want.

Project cards (Configure tab)

Each registered project appears as a card in the Configure tab. Cards have a single-row header that's always visible and a tab-based body that expands on click.

Header

Reading left to right:

• Expand chevron + project name: click to expand/collapse the card.
• Status indicator: a single colored dot next to the project name aggregating the realtime state of every subsystem (Supabase services, Compose, scripts, AI sync, port conflicts, next.config warnings). Red = error, amber = warning, green = at least one service running, muted gray = idle, animated cyan spinner = transitioning. Hover for a tooltip that lists each subsystem's state.
• Tech badges: e.g. TurboRepo, Supabase (shown when detected).

Supabase connection warning. When a project's app .env is missing the Supabase connection vars, or they've gone stale relative to the live target (e.g. after switching isolation, which republishes ports), the card shows a supabase env: not connected / supabase env: out of date pill. Click it to open Connect and push fresh values, or choose Ignore for this project.

• Env mode chip: read-only Host or Thin label (matching the project's isolation mode). To switch modes, open the Supabase tab and use the Environment section at the top.
• Issues counter: red for errors, amber for warnings. Click to open the issues popover (see below). Hidden when there are no issues.
• Warnings chip: all project-level warnings (isolation drift, missing env vars, config issues, etc.) are consolidated into a single amber chip next to the enable toggle. Click it to see each warning item-by-item; it shows a spinner while Supbuddy re-checks the project.
• Enable toggle (right edge): turn the project's proxy on/off without deleting it.
• ⋯ actions menu (right edge): every project-level action: Edit project, Rescan, Re-check configs (re-runs the connection/env drift check for this project), Select folder, Export bundle, and Delete project.

Issues popover

Clicking the issues counter opens a popover listing all current errors and warnings. Each issue shows a severity icon, title, optional detail, and a → open {tab} link. Clicking the link jumps to the relevant tab and closes the popover.

Body tabs (when expanded)

The body renders a flat tab strip with 6 conditional tabs. Below ~480 px, the strip collapses to a dropdown selector. (Project-level actions, like edit, rescan, re-check configs, select folder, export, and delete, are in the header's ⋯ menu, not a tab.)

Apps (default tab)

Per-app rows are domain-first: domain → :port (with hover-revealed copy/open URL buttons), then app name + tech badge, then a flex spacer pushes hover-revealed edit / delete / access (LAN / Tailscale state) actions and the per-mapping toggle to the right edge. A Map CTA appears on hover for unmapped apps. Manual mappings scoped to this project (not auto-generated) are listed below under their own subheader.

Supabase (shown when Supabase is detected)

Environment section (top): host/thin switcher. A legacy project still on the old Isolated (VM) mode shows the migration wizard here instead (see Migrating a legacy Isolated (VM) project to Thin).

Action bar: Start, Stop, Restart buttons; a first-class Connect button (cyan, opens the connection panel for .env generation / merge); and a More menu with Config editor and Details.

Config editor: secret extraction. When you save a supabase/config.toml that contains a secret-bearing value inline (e.g. an SMTP password under [auth.email.smtp], an OAuth secret, or any *_key/auth_token), Supbuddy prompts before writing: it lists the detected secrets and lets you pick which gitignored env file to move them to (defaulting to the project-root .env.local). The value is written there and replaced in config.toml with an env(SUPABASE_…) reference, so secrets never land in git. Supbuddy injects those SUPABASE_-prefixed values back into the supabase start environment so the references resolve. (Saving a config with no inline secrets writes directly, with no prompt.)

Service rows (read-only): status dot, service name, URL. No inline actions; lifecycle is driven by the action bar.

Compose (shown when Compose services are detected)

Action bar: Start, Stop, Restart. Service rows are read-only (status dot, name, URL). Add-on services declared in supbuddy.addons.yml (see Add-on Compose services) appear here alongside the base stack and in get_compose_status over MCP.

Other (shown when non-Supabase, non-Compose services are detected)

Read-only service rows: status dot, name, URL.

Scripts (shown when scripts are detected)

Bookmarked scripts appear in a Quick Access group at the top; remaining scripts appear under Other Scripts. Per-script row: status dot, name, uptime, bookmark star, Start/Stop/Restart buttons. A search input appears when there are more than 5 scripts.

AI Tools

Wraps the project-context-sync panel: sync mode selector (Auto / Manual / Off), detected targets list with per-target scope (global / local), advanced options, and recent activity. See Per-project AI context sync for what global vs. local means.

Project-level actions (Edit, Rescan, Re-check configs, Select folder, Export bundle, Delete) are no longer a tab. They live in the header's ⋯ actions menu.

Multiple Supabase projects (the main use case)

The reason Supbuddy exists. Stock Supabase CLI binds to fixed ports (54321 Kong, 54322 Postgres, 54323 Studio, 54324 Inbucket). Two projects on the same machine collide; you must supabase stop one before supabase start-ing the other.

Two ways to break that constraint, picked per project in the Supabase tab → Environment section:

Thin (lightweight, recommended)

Switch a project to Thin. Supbuddy assigns it a free port block (in the 55000+ range), writes those ports plus a unique Compose project_id into its supabase/config.toml, and runs supabase start on your normal host Docker, with no nested containers and nothing to pull. Several projects boot side by side this way; each is reached by name (api.acme.test, studio.acme.test, mail.acme.test). Switch back to Host and Supbuddy restores the original config.toml and stops just that project's stack.

This is the lightest, fastest option and the right default for most setups — which is why newly registered projects default to Thin. One caveat: if your config.toml omits a port key (e.g. [inbucket] smtp_port), Supbuddy can't relocate a port that isn't declared, so that one service falls back to its stock port. That is fine for a single project, but spell those keys out if two Thin projects need the same service.

Dev servers on Thin: every project keeps its own :3000

A Thin project also gets its own loopback IP (127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.3, …, persisted per project). Its app dev servers bind that IP instead of 127.0.0.1, so canonical ports never collide across projects — five Next.js apps in five projects can all run on :3000 at once, and Supbuddy's proxy routes each web.<project>.test to its project's IP.

Start dev servers through the launcher:

supbuddy run -- next dev          # binds -H <project loopback IP>, stays on :3000
supbuddy run -- vite              # injects --host <ip> --strictPort
supbuddy run --print -- next dev  # show what would run, without running it

supbuddy run reads the project's IP from the nearest .supbuddy/meta.json (loopbackIp, written when Thin is enabled), ensures the loopback alias exists, injects the right bind flag for the detected framework, and execs your command. It prints one concise line with the project's Caddy-proxied URL (e.g. [supbuddy] → https://web.<project>.test) — the address you should actually open. For Next and Vite it also hides the dev server's own - Local:/- Network: banner (which only echoes the raw loopback IP 127.0.0.N:<port>, bypassing Supbuddy's HTTPS proxy): those two lines are filtered out of the piped output, every other line passes through untouched, and colours are preserved via FORCE_COLOR (stdin stays interactive). Other frameworks pass through with no filtering. When a project has several app mappings, it matches the one whose port equals the dev server's port (from --port/-p or the framework default), else lists them all. Make it the project's dev script ("dev": "supbuddy run -- next dev") so nobody — humans or agents — has to remember it. Never move an app to a nonstandard port because 127.0.0.1:3000 is busy; that port belongs to another project's IP space.

When to stay on Host

Keep a project on Host only when its Supabase stack runs on the host independently of Supbuddy — you run supabase start yourself on the stock ports and don't want Supbuddy rewriting config.toml. MCP registration (register_project) detects a stack like that (running containers for the project's config.toml project_id) and keeps the project on Host automatically; in the app's Add-project dialog, pick Host in the Environment section for such projects. Stop the stack (supabase stop) and switch to Thin whenever you're ready.

Running them all at once

Register as many projects as you want, and all of them can be "active" (proxied) at the same time. There's no limit. A Thin project's stack restarts in seconds; a Host project needs the standard supabase start cycle.

Migrating a legacy Isolated (VM) project to Thin

If you created a project in an older version of Supbuddy that used the now-retired Isolated (VM) mode, Supbuddy detects it on launch and offers a one-way, guided migration to Thin. The migration wizard appears in the Supabase tab's Environment section for any project still flagged as VM.

The migration is data-safe: Supbuddy dumps your Postgres data, starts a fresh Thin stack, restores the dump into it, and row-count-verifies the restore before tearing down the old VM container. No data loss. After migrating, the VM is gone and there's no way to switch back (but your data is intact in the Thin stack).

Over MCP, three tools handle the migration bridge:

• list_pending_vm_migrations (read): lists all projects still on the legacy VM mode awaiting migration.
• migrate_vm_to_thin ( { project_id } ) (write): starts the guided data-safe migration (dump, restore, verify).
• finish_vm_migration ( { project_id } ) (write): tears down the old VM container after migration is verified. Returns an error if called before verification passes.

Custom domains & TLDs

Every mapping resolves through Supbuddy's built-in DNS server on port 5353. By default the TLD is .test (an IETF-reserved TLD safe for local use). You can change the default in Settings → General → Default TLD to local, dev, or anything else; existing mappings are migrated to the new TLD on save.

For host resolution, Supbuddy does not use /etc/hosts for wildcards; it runs a DNS resolver. macOS's default resolver only queries port 53; Supbuddy installs a per-project resolver file under /etc/resolver/<project-domain> (e.g. /etc/resolver/myapp.local) pointing at 127.0.0.1:5353. macOS picks the longest-suffix-matching file, so per-project entries route reliably without colliding with reserved namespaces like .local (which Bonjour/mDNS owns). You'll be prompted for sudo the first time this changes.

Resolver files exist only for domains the proxy actually serves — the same set that gets a Caddy site block: enabled mappings that are either standalone or under an enabled project. Disable or delete a project and its resolver file is removed with its routes (one sudo prompt, and only when something really changed), so its domains go back to failing as "server not found" instead of resolving into a TLS handshake error from a proxy that has nothing to serve. Enabling it again writes the file back; so does restarting the proxy.

Per-project TLD

By default every project's domain uses the global TLD (Settings → Default TLD, e.g. .test). A single project can opt into its own TLD — set the suffix in the project dialog, pass tld to the register_project / update_project MCP tools, or use the CLI: supbuddy project add <path> --tld=portal when registering, or supbuddy project set <project> --tld=portal on an existing one (--tld= with an empty value clears the override). That project's base domain and all its subdomains then live on the override TLD (e.g. cueplusplus.portal, web.cueplusplus.portal) while every other project stays on the global default. The override is durable across restarts and is unaffected when you change the global TLD. Prefer .test or a vanity label like .portal; avoid .local (it collides with macOS mDNS/Bonjour).

LAN sharing

When LAN sharing is enabled (Settings → Network), Supbuddy binds Caddy to 0.0.0.0 instead of 127.0.0.1 and runs an mDNS responder so other machines on your local network can reach your dev servers via <hostname>.local. Useful for testing on your phone or another laptop without setting up Tailscale.

.local TLD + LAN sharing: macOS reserves the .local namespace for Bonjour/mDNS (RFC 6762), and macOS's TCP stack short-circuits self-connections to your own LAN IP via the loopback path without consulting pf, so the obvious "redirect lo0 → my LAN IP" trick can't fix it. Supbuddy's mDNS responder works around this by ignoring queries that originate from this machine, letting the OS resolver fall through to /etc/resolver/<project-domain> (which routes to 127.0.0.1 where Caddy listens). Other LAN devices still get answered with the LAN IP and reach you normally. The net result: .local works correctly both on this machine and on other LAN devices, with no manual configuration. If you previously worked around this by switching to .test, you can switch back.

If studio.<project>.local (or similar) doesn't load: open the Configure tab. A red banner will tell you whether it's a DNS, port-forwarding, or mDNS-race issue, with the specific recovery action.

Tailscale

If you have Tailscale installed and a Tailscale API key configured in Settings, Supbuddy can push split-DNS routes to your tailnet so any device on your tailnet resolves your Supbuddy domains. Optional, off by default.

Monorepo support

Supbuddy auto-detects these monorepo layouts when scanning a project root:

• Turborepo (presence of turbo.json)
• pnpm workspaces (pnpm-workspace.yaml)
• npm/yarn workspaces (workspaces field in root package.json)
• Common folder layouts: apps/*, packages/*, services/*, sites/*

Each detected app gets its own subdomain. Supabase is searched for in the project root and these subdirectories: apps/*, packages/*, services/*, sites/*, db/, db/*, database/, database/*, packages/backend, packages/db, packages/database.

Detected app frameworks

Port detection looks for the framework dependency in package.json and combines that with: explicit -p/--port in the dev script, PORT= env in the dev script, or a config file read. If none of those resolve, the framework default is used:

Server Actions allowedOrigins audit

For Next.js apps, Supbuddy reads your next.config.{ts,mts,js,mjs,cjs} and extracts the hosts in experimental.serverActions.allowedOrigins. If a mapped subdomain is missing from that list, the project's warnings chip flags next.config: N origins missing; Server Action POSTs through Supbuddy mappings would 403 otherwise. Open the Apps tab (the chip's "open apps" jump) where the affected app shows the warning with a Fix button.

The Fix button opens a dialog with a paste-ready snippet and an Apply… button: click it to see a unified diff of the change Supbuddy will make to your next.config, then Confirm & write to apply it. Supbuddy handles the four common config shapes (existing allowedOrigins array, existing serverActions block without it, existing experimental block without serverActions, or no experimental at all). The edit is strictly additive: existing array entries are kept verbatim, including spreads (...devHosts), identifiers and comments, and only the missing origins are appended.

If allowedOrigins (or serverActions, or experimental) is set to something other than a plain array/object literal — an identifier, a function call, a ternary, [...] as string[] — Supbuddy refuses to patch rather than guess, and the dialog says so along with the exact origins to add. This is deliberate: a wrong rewrite would produce a duplicate key (TypeScript TS1117) that breaks your build long after the fact, so the fallback is the copyable snippet. Use it and edit by hand.

After write, Supbuddy rescans the project so the warning disappears immediately. Restart your dev server for the change to take effect; Next.js does not hot-reload next.config. Over MCP the same audit is exposed as preview_next_origins / apply_next_origins; both return ok: false with an explanation in the refusal case, and apply_next_origins never writes a file it cannot verify.

Next.js cross-origin dev requests (allowedDevOrigins)

Supbuddy proxies your dev server but passes the browser's real Origin header through (it no longer rewrites Origin to the upstream address). That's required so Server Actions and other origin checks see the actual page origin — but it means Next.js 15.3+ and 16 dev servers, which validate cross-origin dev requests against allowedDevOrigins (defaulting to localhost), now treat a request arriving on a Supbuddy domain (or a Thin project's 127.0.0.N loopback IP) as cross-origin and can reject it. Add your Supbuddy domain to allowedDevOrigins in next.config:

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  allowedDevOrigins: ['web.myproject.test'],
}

Restart the dev server afterward; Next.js does not hot-reload next.config. This is separate from experimental.serverActions.allowedOrigins (the Server Actions CSRF list above) — 15.3+/16 may need both.

Vite allowedHosts audit

For Vite apps, Supbuddy reads your vite.config.{ts,mts,cts,js,mjs,cjs} and extracts server.allowedHosts. If a mapped host isn't covered, the warnings chip flags vite: N hosts blocked; Vite's dev server otherwise rejects proxied requests for unknown hosts with Blocked request. This host ("…") is not allowed. (403). A .your-project.local entry counts as covering every subdomain, so an existing wildcard suffix doesn't trigger a false warning.

Like the Next.js audit, the affected app's Fix button on the Apps tab opens a dialog with a paste-ready snippet and an Apply… button that previews a unified diff and writes server.allowedHosts into your vite.config (handling an existing allowedHosts array, an existing server block without it, or no server block at all; allowedHosts: true is left untouched). The edit is strictly additive — existing entries, spreads and comments are kept verbatim and only missing hosts are appended — and, exactly as with the Next.js audit, Supbuddy refuses to patch when allowedHosts or server is set to anything other than a plain array/object literal, pointing you at the snippet instead of risking a duplicate-key build break. After write, Supbuddy rescans so the warning clears. Restart your dev server for the change to take effect; Vite does not hot-reload vite.config.

MCP setup (AI agents)

Supbuddy ships a built-in MCP server on http://127.0.0.1:9877/mcp with static Bearer-token auth. Five clients have one-click install; any other MCP-compatible tool can be configured manually with the same URL + token.

Open Settings → MCP → Add client, pick the client kind, and Supbuddy generates a token, edits the client's config file, and backs up the original (<file>.supbuddy-backup next to it). If the install can't complete it surfaces an error toast rather than stalling. The same client-management surface (Settings → MCP → Clients: install, edit scopes, set-primary, rotate token, revoke) drives each client from the app.

Auto-install paths

MCP tool surface

The MCP server has full read and write access:

• Read tools (list_mappings, list_projects, get_health, get_compose_status, list_pending_vm_migrations, etc.), with env values and request bodies included.

• get_client_capabilities and request_scope_elevation (scope discovery + user-approved grant).

• read_env_file, tail_request_logs, watch_audit_log.

• Write tools: create_mapping, delete_mapping (soft-delete), register_project, update_project, set_supabase_config_path, start_proxy, start_supabase, stop_supabase, restart_supabase, switch_isolation, migrate_vm_to_thin, finish_vm_migration, start_compose, stop_compose, restart_compose, scaffold_addons, seed_addons, write_env_file, copy_env_var, write_supabase_config.

• Scripts tools (list_scripts, start_script, stop_script, restart_script, bookmark_script, tail_script_logs); see Scripts MCP tools below.

• Extended Supabase tools: init_supabase, validate_supabase_config, list_supabase_backups, restore_supabase_backup, cancel_supabase_start, force_recreate_supabase, restart_supabase_container, get_supabase_analytics, set_supabase_analytics.

• Bundle (export/import a project's full config): export_bundle, import_bundle, validate_bundle.

• Supbuddy Cloud (opt-in, per-project): cloud_sign_in, push_to_cloud, get_cloud_status, preview_cloud_env, cloud_teardown, plus live sync (cloud_sync_start, cloud_sync_status, cloud_sync_stop) — push a project (with its Supabase schema + data) to a hosted cloud stack and control it. The cloud link ({ projectId, stackId, pushedAt, url }) also appears on get_project / list_projects, so any client sees which projects are in the cloud. get_cloud_status also returns a box summary — what the stack's box last reported doing, as a phase plus a per-unit state list, with report_at so the caller can age it. It is deliberately structural: the box's free-text detail is NOT included, because that text is written by whatever runs inside the box and this value reaches an agent's context. Absent (null) when the stack has never reported or runs an image with no reporter.

  preview_cloud_env answers what a project's env would MEAN in a cloud box, before anything is pushed. Values are classified, never uniformly substituted — a blanket rewrite silently repoints a project at a different backend, and a blanket copy points a cloud box at a database on somebody's laptop. Each variable comes back as local (127.0.0.1, a .local host, a LAN address — meaningless inside a box), remote (correct as-is in both places), secret, or plain, each with a reason in plain words, plus needs_attention — the count of local ones, the only number that implies an action. It is read-only and changes nothing. Secret values are never returned — not masked, not truncated, omitted: a masked secret is still a decision to send it somewhere, and a preview has no use for the value.

• Connection / env-target workflow: preview_connection, get_env_targets, diff_env, apply_env, write_connection, test_connection, dismiss_connection_drift.

• Host & network tools: bundled-runtime trust (get_trust_status, install_trust, remove_trust, detect_trust_tools, test_trust), Tailscale (get_tailscale_status, set_tailscale_key, remove_tailscale_key, test_tailscale), DNS (get_dns_status), CA (uninstall_ca), and port-forwarding (get_port_forwarding_status, set_port_forwarding, reload_port_forwarding). Two port-forwarding fields mean different things and are reported separately: enabled is what you asked for, enforced is whether the 443 → 8443 redirect is actually live — probed, not remembered. get_proxy_status and get_health both carry the same distinction as portForwardingEnabled and portForwardingEnforced, and report networkingDegraded: true when the two disagree, because a redirect that is switched on and not working is an outage rather than a setting. The live probe is decisive in both directions: it overrides a stored flag that claims health, and it also clears one left behind by an abandoned repair once the redirect is confirmed working. reload_port_forwarding re-applies the rules with a sudo prompt and returns ok only once a fresh probe confirms 443 answers — a successful pfctl and a working redirect are not the same claim. set_port_forwarding deliberately returns no ok field at all: the elevation runs on the host and resolves after the tool has already replied, so it reports requested plus confirmed: false and points you at get_port_forwarding_status. It can still fail afterwards — a declined prompt, a timeout, or a ruleset that fails validation — and a success token there would be a guess, not an observation.

• tail_service_logs: streams a Compose/add-on service's container logs over SSE (like tail_request_logs but for container stdout/stderr).

• watch_supabase: streams a project's live Supabase start/stop/restart progress over SSE: operation status, image-pull/service snapshots, and (for VM projects) raw log lines. Backs supbuddy supabase start --follow.

• System doctor: doctor (scope read) runs the read-only health & drift scan and returns a report of findings (each with a checkId, severity, evidence, and whether it's fixable) — it mutates nothing. doctor_fix ( { check_ids: [...] } ) applies the opt-in repairs for those checks; it's system-scoped and confirm-gated (a modal, exactly like uninstall_ca), so a read-scoped client can't trigger a fix and an agent can't silently run a destructive repair. Backs supbuddy doctor / doctor --fix (see System doctor).

• System reset: system_wipe ( { tier: "soft" | "deep" } , scope system) runs the tiered reset described under System reset. It is gated twice: it always returns a plan first — even for auto_apply clients — whose side_effects are the literal manifest the wipe will execute, and the subsequent apply still blocks on a user confirmation modal. tier: "full" is rejected: it deletes the credentials the caller is authenticating with, and its final steps (uninstalling the service, removing the app-data directory) can't run inside the daemon — run supbuddy reset --tier=full in a terminal instead.

• Multiple MCP clients can connect simultaneously. The same MCP-HTTP surface backs the headless CLI (see Command-line interface below).

Scopes: discovery & self-service elevation

Each MCP client holds a set of scopes (read, log_tail, mappings, projects, services, config, system, apply) chosen when it's added. A tool call that needs a scope the client lacks fails with scope_denied, whose payload now carries a user_message and details.remediation pointing at the fix.

• get_client_capabilities ( { tool? } ) returns the calling client's granted_scopes and available_scopes. Pass a tool name to get { required_scope, required_feature, can_call, reason? } so an agent can pre-flight a call instead of probing by hitting scope_denied.
• request_scope_elevation ( { scopes: [...] } ) asks the user to grant the named scopes. Supbuddy shows a blocking approval dialog; on approval the scopes are added to the client. Already-granted scopes short-circuit without a prompt.

You can also review and edit any client's scopes from the GUI: Settings → MCP → Clients lists each client's granted scopes inline and exposes a Scopes button that opens the same scope editor used when adding a client.

Registering a project via MCP

register_project takes a root_path (required), an optional label, auto_scan (default true), and an optional isolation ('thin' or 'host'). It registers the project the same way the GUI's "Add project" flow does:

• Derives a base domain as <slug>.<defaultTld> from the label (or the folder name), e.g. staffhub.test.
• Records both the project path and rootPath so the project is visible to the proxy, scans, and file tools alike.
• Scans the folder (unless auto_scan: false) for apps, services, scripts, and package manager.
• Creates per-app subdomain mappings from the discovered apps (e.g. site.staffhub.test → :3400), derives the host service subdomains (api., studio., …), and reloads Caddy.
• Defaults to thin isolation: the project gets its own loopback IP so its dev servers keep canonical ports (:3000) with no cross-project collisions — run them with supbuddy run -- <dev command>. The one exception: if the project's Supabase stack is already running on the host outside Supbuddy, registration keeps it on host (switching would rewrite its config.toml ports and orphan the running stack). Pass isolation: 'host' to opt out explicitly, or isolation: 'thin' to skip the detection and force thin.

The response includes an isolation_note explaining which mode was chosen and why — agents should read it instead of assuming.

Switching isolation over MCP

switch_isolation ( { project_id, target_mode: 'host' | 'thin', auto_start? } ) moves an existing project between host and thin mode. To-thin writes the per-project port block and project_id into supabase/config.toml and (unless auto_start: false) starts Supabase; to-host restores the original config.toml and stops that project's stack. It runs in the background and returns { started: true }; poll get_project (isolation) for the current mode.

A project can also be patched with update_project: its patch accepts name, enabled, domain, and isolation (it intentionally does not accept path/rootPath). Note that patching isolation only flips the flag; use switch_isolation to actually provision/tear down the port assignment.

Legacy VM migration over MCP

For projects still on the retired Isolated (VM) mode, three tools handle the one-way migration to Thin:

• list_pending_vm_migrations (read): lists all projects still on the legacy VM mode, with their current vmState and migration readiness.
• migrate_vm_to_thin ( { project_id } ) (write): starts the guided data-safe migration. It dumps Postgres data from the VM, starts a fresh Thin stack, restores the dump, and row-count-verifies before signalling completion. Returns { started: true }; poll get_project (migrationState) for progress.
• finish_vm_migration ( { project_id } ) (write): tears down the old VM container after verification passes. Errors if called before the verify step completes.

Repointing a project's Supabase config

set_supabase_config_path ( { project_id, supabase_path } ) switches which supabase/config.toml a project uses, for monorepos that carry more than one (e.g. a repo-root config and an app-level one). supabase_path is the project-relative directory containing the supabase/ folder ("." for the repo root, e.g. "apps/getnightowls"). It persists the path, re-derives supabaseProjectId from the new config, and re-scans services. The previous stack's Docker volume is left intact (not deleted), so the switch is reversible; the response reports it under orphaned_previous_stack.

Moving a secret between env files

copy_env_var ( { source_path, source_key, target_path, target_key? } ) relocates a single variable from one env file to another (e.g. a value put in an app's .env.local that the stack actually injects from the repo-root .env.local). The value is read and written entirely inside the worker (it never crosses the MCP boundary and never appears in the audit log), so an agent can move a secret without it being printed. target_key defaults to source_key.

Plan / apply for destructive tools

Tools that delete or mutate state (delete_mapping, delete_project, write_env_file, etc.) return a plan with a preview. The MCP client (or you, in the Activity panel) explicitly calls apply with the plan_id to execute. Plans expire after 5 minutes if not applied. Soft-deletes go to the Trash and are recoverable for 7 days.

Add-on Compose services

A project can declare extra Docker Compose services that Supbuddy discovers, merges, runs, health-checks, and tails alongside the managed stack: a Redis cache, a worker queue, a search engine, etc. Add-on services run on the host's shared Docker daemon in both host and thin isolation, with no extra setup needed.

Declaration files & merge precedence

Supbuddy looks for up to three Compose fragments in the project and merges them, later wins:

1. docker-compose.yml: your base Compose file.
2. docker-compose.override.yml: your own override, honored if present (standard Compose convention).
3. supbuddy.addons.yml: Supbuddy-owned add-on fragment.

All present fragments are passed explicitly, e.g. docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.override.yml -f supbuddy.addons.yml --project-name <pinned> …. The project name is pinned so the same set of containers is addressed every time. Add-on services join the Compose project's default network automatically; no extra network setup is needed for them to reach (or be reached by) the rest of the stack.

supbuddy.addons.yml format

A valid Compose fragment (a standard services: map) plus an optional Supbuddy-only x-supbuddy: extension block. A plain docker compose up ignores x-supbuddy:, so the file stays usable without Supbuddy. Today x-supbuddy supports a one-shot seed step:

services:
  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    ports: ["6379:6379"]
x-supbuddy:
  seed:
    service: redis
    command: ["redis-cli", "ping"]   # explicit argv, runs once after services are healthy
    runOnce: true

The seed step runs once after the add-on services are up and healthy. It's idempotent, keyed by a signature of the seed spec, so it only re-runs if the spec changes (or you force it). It fires automatically on project start, and on demand via the seed_addons MCP tool.

MCP tools

• scaffold_addons ( { project_id } ): scope config. Creates a starter supbuddy.addons.yml if the project doesn't have one. Never clobbers an existing file.
• seed_addons ( { project_id, force? } ): scope services. Runs the declared x-supbuddy.seed step. Idempotent unless force: true.
• tail_service_logs ( { project_id, service } ): scope log_tail. Streams a Compose/add-on service's container logs over SSE (like tail_request_logs, but for container stdout/stderr).
• watch_supabase ( { project_id } ): scope log_tail. Streams a project's live Supabase start/stop/restart progress over SSE: operation (status + message), progress (image-pull/service snapshots), and log (raw lines, VM projects). The stream ends on a terminal status. Backs supbuddy supabase start --follow.

Scripts MCP tools

Scripts detected in a project (e.g. dev, build, test) are controllable over MCP:

• list_scripts ( { project_id } ): scope read. Returns all detected scripts with their current status and bookmark state.
• start_script ( { project_id, script } ): scope services. Starts the named script process.
• stop_script ( { project_id, script } ): scope services. Stops the named script process.
• restart_script ( { project_id, script } ): scope services. Stops then starts the named script process.
• bookmark_script ( { project_id, script, bookmarked } ): scope services. Pins (bookmarked: true) or unpins a script in the Quick Access group.
• tail_script_logs ( { project_id, script } ): scope log_tail. Streams the named script's stdout/stderr over SSE.

get_compose_status shape

get_compose_status ( { project_id } ) returns per-service status, not just whether Compose is installed:

{
  "project_id": "…",
  "compose_installed": true,
  "running": true,
  "services": [
    { "name": "redis", "status": "running", "health": "healthy", "ports": ["6379:6379"], "image": "redis:7-alpine", "container_id": "…", "source": "addons" }
  ],
  "services_source": "store-snapshot (updated by docker events, not probed by this call)"
}

Each service's source is one of base | override | addons, telling you which fragment declared it.

The service statuses are a snapshot, kept current by Supbuddy's docker-events watcher rather than probed when you call — which is why services_source says so. Only compose_installed is checked on the call itself. get_supabase_status reports the same way, and answers the question its name asks: running plus the project's Supabase services, alongside the machine-level cli_installed and docker_running.

Per-project AI context sync

Each project has a Context sync: AI tools panel, accessible via the AI Tools tab in the project card, that writes a project-scoped briefing to disk so AI agents working in that repo see your live mappings, services, and isolation state without having to ask. Files written:

• .supbuddy/: README.md, mappings.md, services.md, project.md, mcp.md, do-not.md, docs.md. The full live snapshot, regenerated on each sync.
• AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md: a small managed block prepended (or updated in place) telling the agent which project this is and pointing it at .supbuddy/.
• Editor skill files when detected: .cursor/rules/supbuddy.mdc, .claude/skills/supbuddy/SKILL.md, .codeium/windsurf/rules/supbuddy.md, .continue/rules/supbuddy.md, .github/copilot-instructions.md, .idea/supbuddy.md.
• .gitignore managed block, ignoring: .supbuddy/meta.json (volatile sync state), *.supbuddy-backup-* (rollback snapshots), and the per-editor skill files that are written locally (see scope below). The rest of .supbuddy/ is intended to be committed; AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and .github/copilot-instructions.md are also kept committable since you may have hand-written content there alongside Supbuddy's managed block.

Global vs. local scope

The per-editor skill files are generic Supbuddy-owned pointers ("this is a Supbuddy project: read .supbuddy/, prefer the MCP tools"). For editors that expose a Supbuddy-owned global location, Supbuddy writes that pointer once, machine-wide instead of copying it into every project, so it isn't duplicated across all your repos. Project-specific data always stays local in .supbuddy/.

• Claude Code → one global skill at ~/.claude/skills/supbuddy/SKILL.md. Cursor → ~/.cursor/skills/supbuddy/SKILL.md. The global skill self-scopes: it only acts when the working directory has a .supbuddy/ folder, and resolves the active project from that folder's meta.json.
• All other targets (windsurf, continue, the AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md/Copilot managed blocks, JetBrains) stay local: their "global" files are shared user files, so Supbuddy won't overwrite them.
• Each target has a scope setting: auto (default: global for the Claude/Cursor skills, local for everything else), global, local (force per-project, useful if you commit the file for teammates), or off. A machine-global file is reference-counted across projects and removed automatically once no project uses it (on disabling sync, deleting a project, or switching that target back to local). Note: uninstalling Supbuddy (e.g. dragging it to the Trash on macOS) does not auto-remove these global files; delete them manually from ~/.claude/skills/supbuddy/ and ~/.cursor/skills/supbuddy/ if needed.
• The always-loaded CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md managed block stays local as a safety net so agents stay aware even if the on-demand global skill doesn't auto-activate.

Sync modes per project:

• Auto: Supbuddy regenerates the files whenever mappings, services, or project state change.
• Manual only: files are only written when you click Sync now (or use the tray's Sync AI context for all projects).
• Off: nothing is written.

The collapsed header shows an at-a-glance status pill: mode (auto / manual / off), a colored dot for the last sync result, and a relative timestamp. Disabled targets (e.g. an editor whose folder isn't present) appear greyed out in the Detected targets list inside the panel.

Supbuddy Cloud

Push a project — its Supabase schema and data — to a hosted cloud dev-stack (its own full self-hosted Supabase — Postgres, Auth, REST, Storage, Realtime, Studio behind a gateway — as an isolated graph of machines on a per-tenant private network) and control it from the app, the CLI, or MCP. Opt-in and per-project: nothing cloud-related appears in a project until you've signed in.

• Invite-only, for now — Supbuddy Cloud is not open signup. You need an invite from the Supbuddy operator; redeeming it creates your own organisation, with you as its owner. Until you redeem one, cloud actions answer "Supbuddy Cloud is invite-only. Redeem your invite code to create your organisation." Org members cannot issue invites — only the operator can.
• Get started — the top bar shows a Get started with Supbuddy Cloud strip; sign in (email/password) there. Once signed in it becomes Open cloud (opens cloud.supbuddy.app in your browser). Sign-in state + the Claude connection also live under Settings → Cloud.
• Push a project — after signing in, each project's ⋯ menu gains Push to cloud…. The dialog previews what the project's env would mean in the box before you commit: values are classified, never rewritten, and it leads with how many point at this machine — those are meaningless inside a box and are the only ones needing a decision. It never blocks the push (a local-looking value may be exactly what you meant) and changes nothing for you. Secrets are listed by name only; their values are never read out of the file. The push ships the project's stack descriptor + a pg_dump of its Supabase data (fail-closed: uploaded to a private bucket via a single-use key, sha-verified, restored inside the stack's private network, then deleted). Your local project stays intact — a ☁ badge appears on its row; click it (or ⋯ → Open in cloud) to open the stack in the web app.
• CLI / MCP — the same flow headless: supbuddy cloud login|push|status|teardown (password via arg or SUPBUDDY_CLOUD_PASSWORD), or the push_to_cloud / get_cloud_status / cloud_teardown / cloud_sign_in MCP tools. project ls marks pushed projects with ☁, and get_project / list_projects carry the cloud link. cloud_teardown (and the ⋯ teardown) destroy the remote stack and unlink it locally — routed through the same plan/apply gate as other destructive tools.
• Service breadth — a self-hosted push provisions the full Supabase stack by default. Pass push_to_cloud's supabase_services: "minimal" (MCP) to opt down to a lean db/auth/REST stack instead.
• Idle auto-stop — a running cloud stack that reports no activity for ~30 minutes is automatically stopped to save cost (its data + config persist; start it again from the web app). A background reaper also reconciles any stack whose machines went missing.
• Web console — cloud.supbuddy.app lists your org's stacks; open one for its per-service health, live status, and start / stop / restart / tear down controls, plus a Recent activity feed of control-plane events. Push to cloud in the console provisions a stack from a GitHub owner/repo (self-hosted or bring-your-own Supabase; full or minimal service set) — the code-only path; pushing a local project with its data still goes through the desktop app / CLI.

Public addresses, and renaming them

Each app in a cloud box gets a public address of the form <app>.<project>.<org>.supbuddy.cloud — for example web.site.acme.supbuddy.cloud. The <app> label comes from the runner serving that port, <project> and <org> from the slugs you choose. One wildcard certificate is issued per project (*.<project>.<org>.supbuddy.cloud) and covers every app under it.

• Renaming is allowed while boxes are running. It used to be refused, and for a real reason: a box was told its hostnames once, when its machine was created, and that value cannot be changed afterwards — so a rename left it serving the old names while the new address showed the editor instead of your app. Boxes now ask for their hostnames on each heartbeat, so a running box moves itself, usually within a minute.
• The old address stops working immediately. Its DNS records are removed as part of the rename. This is deliberate: leaving them would make the old URL resolve and quietly serve the editor, which is more confusing than a name that has plainly gone away. Links you have already shared will break.
• A rename can succeed while an address is still moving. Certificates are issued by Let's Encrypt, which limits how often the same set of names can be re-issued (5 per week), so renaming back and forth can hit that ceiling. The rename itself still applies — you will see "The name is changed, but 1 box is still moving to it…" with the reason, rather than a silent half-rename.
• Hostnames need the deployment to be configured for them (VERCEL_TOKEN, VERCEL_TEAM_ID, SUPBUDDY_CLOUD_BASE_DOMAIN). Without those, boxes are still reachable through the editor and the stack page says "public hostnames are not configured on this deployment" rather than showing nothing.

The Supbuddy panel, inside the box's editor

Every cloud box's editor carries a Supbuddy view in the activity bar — one place to see what the box is doing without leaving it. It reads the status report the box's own supervisor writes, so it adds no credential and no network listener of its own.

• Box (the main view) — the box's phase and uptime, then four sections:
  • Apps — the runners this project declared. Each shows its state and port, with Open (in the editor's browser), Tab (a real browser tab), Start / Stop, Restart and Logs. A runner that has not started is still listed, because that is usually the one you came to start — and a runner that failed shows why (for example approved for aaaaaaaa, HEAD is bbbbbbbb when autostart's approved commit no longer matches what the box checked out).
  • Services — the stack's own Supabase and sidecar services, with where each one lives. These run on separate machines on your private network, so they are probed rather than supervised; one whose first probe has not landed reads checking, not down.
  • Configuration — read-only: the repository, the commit, the workspace path, the tailnet name and any public hostnames. Nothing here is editable, because all of it is decided by the plan that built the box.
  • System — the box's own plumbing (clone, sshd, tailnet, credential and module installs). It expands itself when something in it is wrong.
• Logs open inline, under the app that produced them, and press again to close. A runner with no output says so rather than showing an empty box, and when the supervisor cannot be reached the panel shows its reason instead of failing quietly.
• If the supervisor stops writing, the panel says so — "The supervisor stopped updating 45s ago. What is shown below may no longer be true." A stale report is never rendered as healthy.
• Apps & Services — the original compact tree, still available below the panel and collapsed by default.

Live sync (local ↔ cloud)

Keep a project's local directory and its cloud box in step, so you can edit locally and run in the cloud. Sync runs over a private Tailscale network; nothing is exposed publicly.

• Start it — in the app, a cloud project's ⋯ menu has Start live sync… and Stop live sync. Starting opens a chooser: nothing is preselected and the confirm button stays disabled until you pick a side, because the first pass overwrites one of them.
• Headless — supbuddy cloud sync start <project> --authority=cloud|local, plus status and stop. Same three as MCP tools (cloud_sync_start / cloud_sync_status / cloud_sync_stop).
• Supbuddy refuses a cloud-authority sync that would destroy local-only work. The box clones your repository from its remote, so it has never seen uncommitted changes or commits you have not pushed — and the first pass deletes anything the other side lacks. Rather than let that happen, starting sync with the cloud as authority is refused, naming what is at risk and the remedy: "…has 2 uncommitted changes (commit or stash them), and 1 unpushed commit (push them first)." A directory that is not a git repository is refused too, since nothing there could be recovered. Choosing this machine's copy is never blocked — that direction overwrites the box.
• Sync survives restarting Supbuddy. The file synchroniser runs in its own process, so quitting and reopening the app (or an update) does not interrupt a running sync; Supbuddy re-adopts the session on start and the status badge picks up where it left off.
• authority decides which side wins the FIRST pass, and that pass is one-way. Choose "cloud" when the box has the truth (the usual case — the repo was cloned there) and "local" when your machine does. It has no default anywhere, deliberately: the named side overwrites the other, so a guess can delete work. After the first sync completes, the session switches to two-way automatically.
• What is not synced — .git, node_modules, .next, dist and .turbo are ignored by default. .git in particular: the box has its own clone with its own remote, and syncing two managed copies of an index produces conflicts that look like repository corruption.
• Requirements — sync needs the tailscaled and mutagen platform packages, which install automatically with the CLI on macOS and Linux (Intel and Apple Silicon / x86-64 and arm64). Windows is not supported yet, and Supbuddy says so rather than reporting a missing package. Without the packages Supbuddy reports sync as unavailable and everything else keeps working.
• Your own Tailscale is untouched. Supbuddy runs its own tailnet daemon with a separate state file and socket, so joining does not log you out of a personal or work tailnet.
• Teardown stops sync first, and the box's tailnet node is removed with the stack — nothing outlives a destroyed stack.
• Seeing it — a syncing project shows its state beside the ☁ badge: First sync…, In sync, n conflicts, or Paused — stack stopped when the box has been idle-stopped. Nothing is shown for a project that is not syncing.
• If sync is unavailable, everything else keeps working. Provisioning, the IDE, runners and teardown do not depend on the sync network; a stack simply comes up without sync and says so.

Command-line interface (CLI)

Everything the desktop app can do is also driveable headlessly from a terminal, with no GUI window. The CLI runs a daemon (the same worker process the GUI uses: Caddy proxy, DNS, Supabase/Compose lifecycle, MCP-HTTP) and a set of commands that attach to it over the local MCP-HTTP port. This is for SSH sessions, CI, tmux/server boxes, and scripting.

The binary is supbuddy, with a short alias sup. Run supbuddy help for the full usage list.

You can install the CLI on its own, without the desktop app:

npx supbuddy@latest        # asks to install the CLI globally (supbuddy + sup)

That command does nothing on its own except offer to put supbuddy and sup on your PATH. The CLI runs independently of the desktop app, so you can add the app later (or never). On a Mac the app installs the same two commands for you.

The daemon

supbuddy daemon --detach        # start the worker in the background
supbuddy status                 # daemon + proxy health, plus which worker the daemon is running
supbuddy version                # which CLI build this is, and which daemon it is talking to
supbuddy stop                   # graceful shutdown

supbuddy version answers a question that used to have no answer: which copy of the CLI is this? Three builds exist and they look identical — the one inside the desktop app (host), the one from npm (npm), and one built from a checkout (dev). The build kind is stamped in at compile time, because nothing at runtime can tell them apart: the version numbers match, and a working-tree build even carries the same daemon/worker.cjs layout as an npm install. It prints the CLI's version, build kind and path, plus the daemon's, and warns when the two disagree — a dev CLI driving a shipped daemon means unreleased code is running privileged repairs against your real machine.

The names supbuddy and sup are reserved for shipped builds. A dev build invoked under either name refuses to run and explains how to find the shadowing symlink, because pnpm link or a hand-made symlink in a directory that precedes /usr/local/bin on PATH otherwise silently replaces the installed CLI. To run a checkout, use ./scripts/supbuddy-dev <command> — it runs from source and needs no build. It deliberately shares the production state dir: a daemon's machine-level resources (the worker port, the Caddyfile, /etc/hosts, /etc/resolver, the pf anchor, the launchd label) are not state-dir scoped, so pointing a dev daemon at a private state dir does not isolate it — it only hides the running daemon from the single-daemon check, after which the dev worker takes port 48760 by killing the process holding it. Sharing the state dir keeps that check working, so supbuddy-dev daemon declines while the app's daemon is running. A dev CLI driving a shipped daemon prints a warning on every command.

--detach backgrounds the daemon and prints its pid + ports. Foreground supbuddy daemon runs it attached (Ctrl-C shuts it down cleanly). On start the daemon writes a discovery file, daemon.json (mode 0600), into the shared state dir holding its pid, the Socket.IO port, the MCP-HTTP port, and a control token; every other command reads it to find and authenticate to the daemon, so you never pass ports or tokens by hand. Only one daemon may run per state dir; a second daemon start is refused.

The CLI and the desktop app share one state dir (~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/), so they manage the same projects, mappings, and settings. They must not run two workers against it at once: if you launch the desktop app while a CLI daemon is running, the app detects it and offers to stop the daemon and continue or quit. It never forks a competing worker (which would corrupt state.json).

After the app updates itself, it replaces an outdated daemon. The daemon is detached, so it survives the app relaunching — without this the app would look updated while still running the previous version's worker, and any fix shipped in that worker would silently not take effect. On launch the app compares the running daemon's version (stamped into daemon.json) against its own: an older daemon is stopped and replaced, and a newer one is left alone and attached to, since an out-of-date app must not downgrade a running worker. If the daemon ignores the graceful stop, the app forces it rather than carrying on as though the stop had worked — attaching to the daemon it just judged stale is exactly how an updated app ends up running old code, and the replacement spawn would be refused anyway ("already running"). Shutdown is bounded from the other side too: every stop step has a timeout and the worker exits even when a service refuses to stop, because a daemon that cannot be stopped cannot be updated. A forced shutdown may leave Caddy briefly running; the health monitor reaps it and the replacement daemon takes over.

Run on login (service)

supbuddy service install        # start-on-login (launchd on macOS, systemd-user on Linux)
supbuddy service status
supbuddy service uninstall

Commands

All app surfaces have a command. Names follow supbuddy <module> <action> [args] [--flags]. The main groups:

Global flags: --json (machine-readable output), --yes (skip confirmations), --quiet, --url/--token (attach to a specific/remote daemon instead of auto-discovery), --state-dir (override the shared dir), --timeout, and -f/--follow for streaming log commands and live supabase start|stop|restart progress.

Destructive operations go through the same plan → apply gate as MCP (see Plan / apply for destructive tools); the CLI's control token is granted auto-apply, so they execute directly.

Live dashboard (TUI)

supbuddy tui                    # or: sup dash

supbuddy tui opens a full-screen terminal dashboard that attaches to the running daemon and shows live connection/proxy status, the project list (with each project's isolation, Supabase, and Compose state), the mapping count, and a tail of recent requests. Press r to refresh, q to quit. It needs a running daemon (supbuddy daemon --detach); if none is found it tells you so.

System doctor

supbuddy doctor                              # read-only scan; prints findings by severity
supbuddy doctor --fix                        # scan, show the repair manifest, confirm (y/N), then apply
supbuddy doctor --fix --only=ca-not-trusted  # restrict repairs to specific check ids (comma-separated)
supbuddy doctor --fix --yes                  # skip the interactive confirm (scripting / CI)

supbuddy doctor runs a read-only health and drift scan and prints its findings grouped by severity — critical, warning, info — each with a title, a one-line detail, and concrete evidence (paths, container names, certificate fingerprints). The scan mutates nothing, so you can gate a script or CI on it.

Exit codes. A check that can't run is an unknown, not a clean bill of health — so the scan reports "I couldn't look" separately from "I looked and it's fine":

Exit 2 covers cases that used to (wrongly) exit 0: with Docker stopped, for example, every Docker-backed check fails to run, and a 0 there would tell CI the machine was healthy while part of the scan was blind. A critical finding outranks an incomplete scan — if both apply you get 1, because that's the actionable one. Gating on "non-zero" catches both; check for 2 specifically if you want to start Docker and retry rather than fail the build. These codes apply to --fix too: a run where every repair applied but part of the scan never ran also exits 2.

--fix re-scans, prints a manifest — one line per fixable finding, taken from the scan you just saw — and, unless you pass --yes, asks Apply these fixes? [y/N] (default No) before touching anything. (The desktop app's doctor panel shows the finer-grained repair actions themselves; the CLI lists the findings those actions belong to.) --only=<comma,ids> restricts the repair to specific check ids; --yes skips the prompt for non-interactive use. This is the confirm-before-harm contract: the scan is read-only, and every repair is opt-in and gated. Fixes that need elevated access prompt for your password when they run.

A repair that ends up doing nothing is reported as such, never as success: if a requested check's finding is already gone, is advisory, can't be re-checked, or names an unknown id, it's listed under NOT APPLIED and the command exits non-zero.

An aborted --fix also exits non-zero (1). Declining the confirmation applies nothing, so every finding is still there — exiting 0 would tell a script the machine was fine when it had just been reported as critical. This matters most where nobody actually declined: with no TTY to prompt on, --fix refuses on principle (confirm-before-harm), so a scripted run prints aborted — no fixes applied and stops. Pass --yes to run it unattended. A daemon-side denial of the confirmation has always exited 1; the same outcome now gets the same code regardless of which side refused.

The doctor ships 21 checks. Rows marked Advisory have no auto-fix at all: --fix will never touch them, and the finding's detail tells you what to do by hand. Checks marked macOS return nothing on other platforms.

The same scan and repairs are available over MCP as the doctor and doctor_fix tools (see MCP tool surface), and in the app under Settings → General → System health → Scan — the panel scans on open, groups the findings by severity, and gates every repair behind the same manifest + confirm step (see Settings reference → General). The panel has no reset button: a wipe stays a CLI operation.

System reset

supbuddy reset                        # soft (the default): app state + caches
supbuddy reset --tier=deep            # + services, Caddy containers, system integrations, CA trust
supbuddy reset --tier=full            # + project data, repo artifacts, secrets, service, app data
supbuddy reset --tier=deep --yes      # skip the y/N confirm (scripting / CI)
supbuddy reset --tier=full --yes --i-understand   # the ONLY scripted path for a full reset

supbuddy reset removes Supbuddy's footprint from your machine in tiers, and each tier is a superset of the one before it:

Most steps enumerate what's actually on your machine first, so anything that isn't there drops out of the manifest instead of being advertised and skipped. soft needs no elevated access at all. deep batches the pf redirect, the resolver configuration and the loopback aliases into one password prompt; the legacy /etc/hosts block and the keychain CA removal ask separately, so expect up to three. full may prompt more than once as it tears projects down.

Reset is a CLI operation, on purpose — there is no reset button in the app. The gates that make a wipe safe don't survive the trip into a GUI: a typed RESET, a refusal on non-interactive input, and a daemon confirmation the app itself would be answering. On top of that, --tier=full refuses outright while the desktop app is running (its watchdog respawns the daemon ~20s after it stops), so a button for it would be a trap. The app's Settings → General → System health panel points here instead.

Backup before harm. Anything you can't regenerate — state.json, every managed Supabase database that is running (pg_dump, custom format, with a .sha256 alongside), every managed data volume (tar.gz, verified with gzip -t) — is written to <app-data>/backups/reset-<timestamp>/ before a single destructive step runs, and if any backup fails the whole reset aborts before destroying anything. The directory is printed prominently before you confirm, and again when the reset finishes; manifest.json inside it records exactly what was planned and what ran. On top of that coarse guarantee, each volume is gated individually: no archive, no removal — a volume with no non-empty .tar.gz next to it is left alone and the run records why.

A backup that can't be written stops the reset — safely. Archiving a volume is given ten minutes; a genuinely large one (tens of GB of Postgres data plus a DinD image cache) can exceed that, and when it does the reset aborts with nothing destroyed. Stop the stack and prune what you don't need (docker system prune, drop old branches/schemas), or archive that volume yourself, then run the reset again. The same applies to any other backup failure: a full disk, an unreadable volume, a Docker daemon that stops answering.

The backups survive a full reset. They live inside the app-data directory, so the last step of --tier=full empties that directory content-wise and skips backups/ rather than deleting it wholesale. Move that directory somewhere safe afterwards — it's the only copy.

Confirmation. Every tier prints the manifest first — the literal list of actions that will run, derived from the same actions the engine executes. soft and deep then ask Apply this "<tier>" reset? [y/N] (default No); --yes skips that prompt. --tier=full requires you to type the word RESET — --yes alone does not bypass it. The one scripted path for a full reset is --yes --i-understand, both flags together. Every prompt refuses on a non-interactive (piped) stdin rather than proceeding.

The daemon confirms too. soft and deep run inside the daemon, which asks for its own approval before it starts — the same gate as doctor --fix and ca uninstall. With the Supbuddy app open you get a native Allow / Deny dialog. A daemon with neither a dialog nor a terminal — the start-on-login service, or an app-spawned daemon while the app is closed — has nobody to ask and denies; run a foreground supbuddy daemon in one terminal and the reset from a second, and it will prompt there. Don't reach for supbuddy daemon --yes to get past it: that auto-approves every confirmation for that daemon's whole lifetime.

Quit the app before a full reset. The desktop app supervises the daemon and restarts it about 20 seconds after it stops, which would put a live daemon back into the directory the last step clears. --tier=full refuses up front while the app is running — before it asks you to type RESET, and before it changes anything. Quit the app (menu bar icon → Quit) and run it again; the quit dialog's default Leave running is fine, since the reset stops the daemon itself. The check looks for the app process only, so nothing else has to change. --tier=full also runs with no daemon at all, so if you quit with Stop service you can go straight ahead.

The order of a full reset, once you've confirmed: the start-on-login service is uninstalled, the daemon is stopped and waited for (the reset refuses to run against a live daemon, which would rewrite state.json underneath it), the backup and teardown steps above run, and only then is the app-data directory emptied — keeping backups/. If the reset aborted, or if a daemon came back while it was running, the app-data directory is left in place and the CLI tells you so rather than clearing it under a live process.

soft and deep are also available over MCP as the plan-gated system_wipe tool (see MCP tool surface). --tier=full is CLI-only: it deletes the credentials any agent would be calling with, and a daemon cannot uninstall the service it runs under or delete the directory it runs from.

What a full reset does not remove. It only ever touches paths of registered projects — there is no disk scan for stray .supbuddy directories — and it won't delete or rewrite files whose ownership is ambiguous. So after --tier=full these are still on disk, and you can remove them by hand:

• Per-editor rule files Supbuddy wrote in your repos: .cursor/rules/supbuddy.mdc, .claude/skills/supbuddy/SKILL.md, .codeium/windsurf/rules/supbuddy.md, .continue/rules/supbuddy.md, .idea/supbuddy.md. Shared files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .gitignore, …) keep their content and only lose Supbuddy's sentinel-delimited block.
• Values apply_env merged into your own .env* files. The fully-owned .env.supbuddy files are deleted.
• The bare .env.supbuddy line in .gitignore — it sits outside the managed block.
• vite.config.* allowedHosts and next.config.* dev-origin patches.
• supabase/config.toml port / project_id patches, when restoring the original file failed during the Thin teardown.
• MCP client config entries written by mcp add / install_mcp_config (~/.claude.json, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, a project .mcp.json / .cursor/mcp.json). The token they hold is dead the moment the secrets are deleted; supbuddy doctor's stale-mcp-config-tokens check will name each file.
• The caddy:latest Docker image (shared and re-pullable) and anything a host-mode project owns.
• The Supbuddy app itself — drag Supbuddy.app to the Trash — and the backups directory, which is the whole point of keeping it.

Settings reference

Open Settings via the gear icon top-right or by clicking the tray icon → Open Dashboard → gear. Five tabs.

General

• Theme: dark or light.
• Auto-start at login: registers Supbuddy as a macOS login item. Default: on.
• Default TLD: applied to new auto-generated mappings. Existing mappings are renamed to the new TLD on save. Default: test.
• Default isolation: host or thin for newly added projects. Default: thin (per-project loopback IP; apps keep canonical ports like :3000). MCP registration additionally keeps a project on host when its Supabase stack is already running on the host outside Supbuddy.
• Auto-subdomain mapping: when on, services and apps detected during a project scan get mappings created automatically. Default: on.
• Bundled-runtime trust: installs Supbuddy's local root CA into a place that apps with bundled JavaScript runtimes (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue, Codex CLI, OpenCode, …) actually read. These apps don't consult the system Keychain (they ship their own Mozilla bundle), so without this they fail OAuth/MCP/HTTPS calls to *.test with unable to get local issuer certificate. Default: prompted on first launch when one of those tools is detected.
  • macOS: writes ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.cueplusplus.supbuddy.bundled-runtime-ca-trust.plist and calls launchctl setenv NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS so GUI-launched apps inherit it at process-start time.
  • Linux: writes ~/.config/environment.d/supbuddy-ca.conf (read by systemd-aware user sessions on GNOME/KDE/Sway/etc.).
  • Windows: per-user setx NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS to HKCU\Environment.
  • Only NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS is set session-globally, because it is additive — Node appends the file to its built-in public roots, so a stale or wrong value can never strip public trust. SSL_CERT_FILE / REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE are deliberately not set globally: they replace the entire trust store, and pointing them at a local-only bundle breaks every public TLS handshake in the login session. Older builds did set them; install and every boot reconcile now actively unset them. OpenSSL/Python tools that need local trust get it per-project, from the merged public+local bundle.
  • It points at ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/ca-bundle/current.crt (or the platform equivalent), a cumulative concatenated PEM Supbuddy maintains — not Caddy's own caddy-data/…/pki/authorities/local/root.crt, which rotates independently. When Caddy rotates its root (yearly today, sometimes more), Supbuddy appends the new root automatically; long-running TLS contexts holding the old root keep working until the process restarts. Reading trust status also verifies Caddy's active root is actually in the bundle and re-appends it if not, so a rotation can't be missed just because the file watcher wasn't running.
  • Test trust: runs an in-process HTTPS request against the first available *.test mapping with the same env vars set, to verify end-to-end without relaunching anything. It probes the real access path (port 443 when port forwarding is on, otherwise the high port), matching what real clients hit, so it doesn't false-negative against a port nothing is forwarding.
  • Effective-value detection: status reports the value in effect, not just the one Supbuddy set. launchctl setenv cannot retro-patch an already-running process, so an app launched before an install keeps whatever it captured and hands that to every shell and dev server it spawns — a terminal can be using a completely different CA path from the one launchctl getenv prints. Supbuddy samples three places: what it set, what a fresh login shell resolves, and what live processes actually hold. Divergent values are listed with the app to relaunch (and flagged when the file no longer exists — Node ignores a missing NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS silently, which presents as unable to get local issuer certificate with nothing to explain it).
  • Conflict refusal: if NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS is already set to a bundle Supbuddy doesn't own (corporate proxy, Zscaler, another vendor's CA), install refuses and surfaces the conflicting path. You can override with the explicit prompt that pops up on Install. A path Supbuddy does own but that isn't the current bundle — an older build's value, or Caddy's root.crt from a hand-rolled setup — is not a conflict: install corrects it.
  • Quit and relaunch your AI tools after install: the env var only takes effect for newly-launched processes. Install names any app still holding an older path.
• System health (Scan): opens the System Doctor panel — the same read-only, 17-check health & drift scan as supbuddy doctor (see System doctor), in the app. Opening the panel only scans; it changes nothing.
  • Findings are grouped critical → warning → info, each with its title, one-line detail, concrete evidence (paths, container names, fingerprints), check id and category. Rescan re-runs the scan; the header shows the counts. A scan that times out says so and points at supbuddy doctor — the daemon is installed and updated separately from the app, and one older than this panel doesn't answer its channels.
  • Fix… on a fixable finding — or Fix all (n) in the header — never repairs anything by itself. It opens the manifest: the literal list of actions that would run, each marked destructive or safe, built from the same actions the engine executes. Apply stays disabled until that manifest has loaded and contains at least one action, so an empty or failed plan can't be rubber-stamped. Same confirm-before-harm contract as doctor --fix.
  • Repairs that need elevated access ask for your password when they run. One that outlives the app's 15-second reply window (a password prompt sitting open) is reported as may still be running — rescan in a moment, not as a failure.
  • Findings with no auto-fix show advisory instead of a Fix button; the detail says what to do by hand. Checks that couldn't run at all are listed at the bottom as Checks that could not run, rather than being silently dropped.
  • There is no reset button here, on purpose — the footer points at supbuddy reset instead. See System reset.

Network

• HTTP port: default 8080.
• HTTPS port: default 8443.
• DNS port: default 5353.
• Port forwarding: when on, inserts a pfctl rule mapping 80→HTTP port and 443→HTTPS port into /etc/pf.conf (correct translation-section placement; self-heals a file corrupted by older versions). Asks for sudo once. Status reflects a live 443 enforcement probe, not just file presence.
• LAN sharing: binds Caddy to 0.0.0.0 + starts mDNS responder.
• Tailscale: paste a tailnet API key to enable split-DNS push.
• Install / Uninstall CA: Install adds Caddy's root cert to your System keychain (removing any stale same-name roots first); Uninstall removes every Caddy Local Authority root it added. macOS asks for your password each time.

Storage

Trash retention (per-kind), volume sizes, image-cache controls.

MCP

• Clients: list of connected clients. Each row has a ⋯ actions menu: install, edit scopes, set-primary, rotate token, revoke.
• Activity: audit log with Apply/Cancel/Undo on plan rows.
• Trash: soft-deleted mappings and projects, restorable for 7 days.
• Settings: server enabled, port (default 9877), audit_cap (default 5000), trash_ttl_days (default 7).

AI Skills

Install Supbuddy's agent skill at the user level (machine-wide) so the agent sees Supbuddy in every repo without per-project setup. Each global-capable agent has a master on/off plus an autosync toggle (keeps the installed skill refreshed when Supbuddy updates it) and shows its install path + version.

• Who can install at user level: only agents whose global file Supbuddy fully owns and that self-scope (act only when the working directory has a .supbuddy/): Claude Code (~/.claude/skills/supbuddy/SKILL.md) and Cursor (~/.cursor/skills/supbuddy/SKILL.md). The install is reference-counted under a synthetic __user__ ref so it persists independent of any project and is never pruned by the boot reconcile.
• Master ↔ project: the AI Skills tab is the master (user-level). To commit a skill into a specific repo, use that project's AI Tools tab and set the target to Project (the old local scope, which writes into the repo for teammates); User there means the master install covers it.
• Agents whose global file holds your own content (Claude CLAUDE.md, Codex AGENTS.md, Copilot, Windsurf, Continue, JetBrains) are project-level only: a machine-wide write there could clobber your config, so they're injected per-project instead.

Tray menu

The macOS menu bar tray icon opens a menu with:

• Status: …: current proxy state (running / idle).
• DNS Active (:5353): shown when proxy is running.
• LAN Sharing (<ip>): shown when LAN sharing is on.
• Tailscale (<ip>): shown when Tailscale is connected.
• Start Proxy / Stop Proxy: opens the dashboard.
• Projects: each project opens a submenu with Apps (click to open the mapped URL), Supabase services (status dot + open), and Scripts (your bookmarked scripts as a one-click Start <name> / Stop <name> toggle), plus Restart Supabase/Restart services and Show in Supbuddy.
• Open Dashboard.
• Sync AI context for all projects: runs the project-context sync engine for every registered project (writes .supbuddy/, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, etc.).
• Show Logs: reveals main.log in Finder.
• Check for Updates...: manual update check (only enabled in packaged builds). The panel names all three moving parts and their versions — the app, the daemon running inside it (bundled when it ships with the app, npm when it came from the CLI package), and the CLI itself — because they release on their own cadences and a single unlabelled version number cannot tell you which is behind. A CLI-only release is detected too: the check asks npm for the newest supbuddy and, when yours is older, says so and gives you the command (npx supbuddy@latest) even though the app itself is current. In that case the panel says "The app is up to date" rather than "You're up to date", which would not be true. A CLI version it cannot determine is shown as unknown rather than left blank, and a failed registry check says it failed instead of implying you are current.
• Quit.

File locations

All under ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/ on macOS:

• main.log + main.log.1: app logs (rotates at 2 MB).
• state.json: persistent state (projects, mappings, settings, MCP clients, license).
• caddy-data/: Caddy's data dir (PKI, autosaves, certs).
• caddy-data/caddy/pki/authorities/local/root.crt: the local CA cert installed in your Keychain.
• ca-bundle/current.crt: cumulative PEM containing every Caddy root that has ever been emitted. Used by Bundled-runtime trust as the target for NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS / SSL_CERT_FILE / REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE. Real file (not a symlink) so Bun-bundled CLIs read it correctly.
• ca-bundle/versioned/<sha>.crt: per-root snapshots for forensics.
• Caddyfile: generated reverse-proxy config.
• daemon.json: written while a headless CLI daemon is running (pid, Socket.IO + MCP-HTTP ports, control token); 0600, removed on shutdown. Used by supbuddy CLI commands to discover and authenticate to the daemon, and by the desktop app to detect a running CLI daemon at launch.
• certs/: legacy CA from the pre-Caddy era (unused in current builds).

MCP-specific:

• MCP client tokens (file-backed secret, mode 0600): ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/secrets/mcp-<client-id>.secret
• MCP audit log: under ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/, capped at audit_cap entries (default 5000).

Troubleshooting

Run a health & drift scan first (supbuddy doctor)

When something's off, supbuddy doctor is the quickest triage. It runs a read-only scan of 18 checks and prints findings by severity, and many of the issues below have a matching check — an unreadable state.json, an untrusted CA, a wedged Caddy, port 443 not redirecting, stale duplicate CA roots, legacy CA-trust LaunchAgents poisoning public TLS, an agent config still holding a revoked MCP token, a Firefox profile pinning an old Caddy root, and leftovers from deleted projects (Docker containers/volumes, 127.0.0.N loopback aliases, /etc/resolver files, MCP token files). Add --fix to apply the opt-in repairs after a confirmation prompt — some checks are advisory and have no auto-fix. See System doctor for the full check list and flags.

Browser shows "Not secure" or certificate warning

The Caddy CA is not trusted. Open Settings → Network → Install Certificate. macOS will prompt for your password. After install, fully restart your browser (Cmd+Q, not just close window). Verify: Keychain Access → System keychain → search for "Caddy Local Authority".

"unable to get local issuer certificate" / "self signed certificate in certificate chain" from Claude Code, Cursor, MCP servers, or other AI tools

These tools ship their own bundled JavaScript runtime (Bun, Electron, pkg-bundled Node) and ignore the system Keychain. Open Settings → General → Bundled-runtime trust and click Install. Then fully quit and relaunch the AI tool; the env var only takes effect for newly-launched processes. Verify with launchctl getenv NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS (macOS); it should print ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/ca-bundle/current.crt. If install is refused with a conflict warning, you already have NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS pointing at a bundle Supbuddy doesn't own (often a corporate proxy / Zscaler), so Supbuddy won't silently overwrite; use the override prompt or manually concatenate the two PEMs.

If it still fails after a relaunch, the process is probably not using the value launchctl getenv prints. Compare them:

launchctl getenv NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS                     # what Supbuddy set
node -e "console.log(process.env.NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS)"   # what your shell actually has

If they differ, an app launched before the install captured the old value and is handing it to every shell and dev server it spawns — launchctl setenv cannot change an already-running process. The trust panel lists the divergent value and names the app to relaunch; quitting and reopening that app (not just the terminal tab) fixes it. A value pointing at Caddy's own caddy-data/…/pki/authorities/local/root.crt is the classic case: that file rotates independently of Supbuddy's bundle, so the two agree until they suddenly don't.

"Docker is not running. Please start Docker Desktop."

Compose and Supabase features need Docker. Open Docker Desktop and wait until the whale icon stops animating.

"Docker Compose is not installed"

Compose v2 ships inside Docker Desktop. If you removed Docker Desktop and are using a standalone Docker daemon (e.g. Colima, Rancher), install compose: brew install docker-compose.

"Leftover host containers" / "isolation drift" warning on a project

Supbuddy flags isolation drift when a project's running containers don't match its configured isolation mode, for example a Host project with a stale thin-mode stack still running, or a Thin project with leftover host-mode containers. Switching isolation modes doesn't tear down the old layer, so those containers linger, waste resources, and can shadow the project's real stack. The warning appears in the warnings chip next to the enable toggle (click it to see each item; it shows a spinner while Supbuddy re-checks), as an entry in the issues counter, and as a notice on the Supabase tab listing the exact containers and any data volumes.

Guided cleanup. Open the Supabase tab → Clean up leftovers… to stop and remove the leftover containers. Data volumes are kept by default; deleting them is opt-in, and when the leftover copy looks newer than the active one, it requires an explicit choice and a backup (tarred to …/Supbuddy/backups/<project>-<timestamp>/). If you recently migrated a VM project, any leftover VM container from before migration can also be cleaned up from this flow.

If the leftover copy's data looks newer than the active one, the warning turns red; don't delete its volumes without first deciding which copy to keep. The Configure tab also shows a dismissible note when Supabase stacks are running on your host that Supbuddy doesn't manage at all (e.g. a plain supabase start).

MCP client says "Invalid OAuth error" or "JSON Parse error: Unexpected EOF"

The MCP client is trying OAuth discovery and getting an empty 404. Either the token was lost (regenerate it in Settings → MCP → the client's ⋯ menu → Rotate token) or you're on a build older than the OAuth-probe fix. Update to the latest version; the server now answers OAuth discovery paths with a structured 404 instead of an empty body, and 401 responses include WWW-Authenticate: Bearer so the client doesn't fall back to OAuth.

MCP token disappeared after app restart

Fixed in recent builds. If you're on an older version, regenerate the token. Root cause was that addMcpClient didn't trigger state persistence; the client was held in memory only.

Server Actions return 403 in a Next.js app behind Supbuddy

Next.js's CSRF guard rejects POSTs whose Origin isn't in experimental.serverActions.allowedOrigins. Supbuddy detects this and flags it in the warnings chip: open the Apps tab and hit Fix on the affected app for a paste-ready snippet, or Apply… to preview a unified diff and write the change to next.config directly. After applying, restart your dev server.

On Next.js 15.3+/16, a proxied dev request can also be blocked (e.g. a "Cross origin request detected" warning) because Supbuddy now passes the real browser Origin through rather than rewriting it, and Next validates it against allowedDevOrigins (which defaults to localhost). Add your Supbuddy domain to allowedDevOrigins in next.config — see Next.js cross-origin dev requests. This is a separate key from the Server Actions list; 15.3+/16 may need both.

Vite dev server returns "Blocked request. This host is not allowed." (403)

Vite (v5+) rejects requests whose Host header isn't in server.allowedHosts, so a Vite app reached through a Supbuddy domain 403s until the host is allowed. Supbuddy detects this and flags vite: N hosts blocked in the warnings chip: open the Apps tab and hit Fix on the affected app for a paste-ready snippet, or Apply… to preview a diff and write server.allowedHosts into your vite.config directly. Restart the Vite dev server afterward; Vite does not hot-reload its config. A single .your-project.local entry covers every subdomain.

Supabase Realtime: channel reaches SUBSCRIBED but no postgres_changes events arrive

If a channel subscribes fine (and writes succeed) but change events never fire, this is almost always realtime warmup timing right after the stack starts — not the Supbuddy proxy. Local Realtime can accept a channel join and report SUBSCRIBED before its logical-replication binding for the tenant is ready, so INSERT/UPDATEs in that brief window are silently missed. Give the stack a few seconds after the Supabase tab goes green, then re-subscribe (or reconnect the channel). This is unrelated to the .local domain: Kong routes /realtime/v1/* by path and rewrites the upstream Host to its internal realtime tenant, so reaching realtime through https://api.<project>.local behaves identically to the raw localhost:54321 port — forwarding the .local host upstream does not change tenant resolution. The new sb_publishable_* / sb_secret_* API keys also work for local realtime (Kong maps them to the legacy JWT), so you don't need to switch key formats.

Project shows a red "PROXY ERROR" banner: domain resolves but won't load

After the proxy starts, Supbuddy runs an end-to-end reachability check: it resolves a project domain through the OS resolver and tries to connect to Caddy on the HTTPS port. If the name resolves but the connection fails, the project shows a red PROXY ERROR banner naming the likely cause (DNS, port-forwarding, or mDNS race) plus a recovery action.

The most common case: the domain resolves to 127.0.0.1 but port 443 won't connect because the elevated pfctl 443→8443 redirect drifted away (typically after a restart, so Caddy is up on 8443 with nothing forwarding 443). Click Retry; as of v2.3.6 it re-applies the port-forwarding rule (approve the sudo prompt). On older builds, toggle the proxy off→on instead. If LAN sharing is off, disregard any "LAN sharing / Bonjour" wording in the banner; the cause is the missing forward, not mDNS.

Port forwarding is on but 443 won't connect

Supbuddy reports port forwarding as active only when a live probe confirms 443 actually reaches Caddy — the rule being on disk isn't enough. If the rule is present but not being enforced (typically right after a reboot, or when an older Supbuddy version left /etc/pf.conf in a broken state), the status carries a pf_not_enforcing diagnostic instead of a false "enabled", and the banner tells you to restart the proxy to re-apply the redirect.

Older versions appended their rdr-anchor to the end of /etc/pf.conf, after Apple's filter anchor — which pf rejects, because translation rules must come before filtering rules. That silently invalidated the whole ruleset, so every later pfctl -f failed and 443 was dead. Current builds insert the anchor in the correct translation section and self-heal a file corrupted by the old version on the next proxy start. Supbuddy keeps a single stable backup at /etc/pf.conf.supbuddy-backup (older builds accumulated unbounded timestamped backups). If a restart doesn't fix it, inspect /etc/pf.conf and confirm the rdr-anchor "virtual.localhost" line sits before anchor "com.apple/*".

Proxy came up but shows a degraded "error" state

If the one-time sudo prompt for port forwarding / DNS is cancelled or fails, Supbuddy no longer aborts the whole start. Caddy still starts and HTTPS keeps working on the high port (8443), and the CA is still generated; the proxy just shows an actionable error (degraded) state with a Retry. Click Retry and approve the sudo prompt to restore real-port (80/443) access and DNS. Until then, reach your apps on https://<domain>:8443.

Port already in use (8080, 8443, 5353, 9877)

Default ports: HTTP 8080, HTTPS 8443, DNS 5353, MCP 9877. Change them in Settings → Network / Settings → MCP. Find what's holding a port: lsof -i :<port>.

Wipe everything and start over

Use supbuddy reset (see System reset) — it backs up anything you can't regenerate first, and it removes the things a plain rm -rf leaves behind (the pf redirect, the resolver files, the loopback aliases, the trusted CA):

supbuddy reset --tier=soft   # just the app state and caches
supbuddy reset --tier=deep   # + services, Caddy leftovers, /etc integrations, CA trust
supbuddy reset --tier=full   # + project data, repo artifacts, secrets, service, app data

The manual equivalent, if the CLI isn't available — quit Supbuddy first, and note that this deletes secrets/ and any backups under it with no copy anywhere:

# Wipe app data (state, certs, Caddyfile, logs, MCP tokens under secrets/)
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Supbuddy

# Optional: remove the trusted CA
sudo security delete-certificate -c "Caddy Local Authority" /Library/Keychains/System.keychain

FAQ

Is Supbuddy free?

Yes. Supbuddy is free. Register as many projects and mappings as you want, with full HTTPS, full DNS, full Supabase isolation, and full read and write MCP access. There are no caps and no tiers.

Does Supbuddy send my data anywhere?

No. Caddy, the DNS server, and the MCP server all run locally on your Mac. The only outbound traffic is: Tailscale split-DNS push (only if you enabled it), auto-update checks (GitHub Releases), and Google Analytics on the marketing site (not the desktop app). The desktop app does not send telemetry.

Can I work offline?

Yes. The app works fully offline once the CA is trusted and projects are registered.

Linux / Windows support?

The desktop app is macOS-only in v2. The headless CLI and daemon also run on Linux, where supbuddy service install registers a systemd-user start-on-login unit (macOS uses launchd). Windows is not supported. A few desktop code paths (certutil, update-ca-certificates) anticipate other platforms but are not tested there.

Can I use my own TLD?

Yes. Set any TLD in Settings → General → Default TLD. Supbuddy installs /etc/resolver/<project-domain> files that tell macOS to query our DNS server for that project's domain. Avoid TLDs that actually resolve on the public internet (.com, .net, etc.); your browser will hit the real site for cached entries.

What happens if I delete a project?

The project moves to the Trash (visible in Settings → MCP → Trash) for 7 days, then is permanently deleted by the sweep timer. Restoring brings back the project record and all its mappings.

How do I uninstall Supbuddy?

1. Quit the app (the full reset refuses to run while it's open, because its watchdog restarts the daemon).
2. Run supbuddy reset --tier=full and type RESET when it asks. This backs up your project data, then removes the containers, volumes, /etc integrations, CA trust, repo artifacts, credentials, the start-on-login service and the app-data directory — keeping <app-data>/backups/reset-<timestamp>/. See System reset, including the short list of things it deliberately leaves behind.
3. Drag Supbuddy.app from /Applications to the Trash, and move the backups directory somewhere safe (or delete it).
4. If you'd rather not use the CLI: see "Wipe everything and start over" above for the manual equivalent, plus sudo security delete-certificate -c "Caddy Local Authority" /Library/Keychains/System.keychain to remove the trusted CA.

Where do I report a bug?

Email support with your version (visible at the bottom of the Settings popover) and the relevant lines from ~/Library/Application Support/Supbuddy/main.log.