feat: Phase 2 — Dokploy integration for multi-server deployment and management

[BasilSuhail]

Overview

As defined in the orchestration audit (#96), Dokploy is the natural next step after Docker Compose for HomeForge's Phase 2 growth stage. This issue tracks the work needed to integrate or support Dokploy as a deployment target.

What is Dokploy?

Dokploy is an open-source, self-hosted PaaS (Platform as a Service) that wraps Docker Compose and Docker Swarm with a clean management UI. It is itself deployed as a single Docker container — consistent with HomeForge's installation philosophy.

Why Dokploy for HomeForge?

Feature	Benefit for HomeForge users
Multi-server management	One dashboard across multiple HomeForge nodes
Zero-downtime deployments	Update services without taking the stack down
Automatic SSL	HTTPS out of the box via Let's Encrypt
Built-in monitoring	Logs, metrics, health — no extra tooling
Docker Compose native	No new concepts for users — same docker-compose.yml
Self-hosted	No vendor lock-in, consistent with HomeForge values

What This Enables

Right now HomeForge is a "one person, one server" product. Dokploy enables:

• A household with a NAS + a Pi running different HomeForge services
• A small team deploying HomeForge across multiple servers
• Remote management without SSH-ing into each machine
• Rolling updates to a new HomeForge release without downtime

Proposed Work

• Evaluate Dokploy compatibility with the current docker-compose.yml structure
• Document a Dokploy deployment guide for HomeForge
• Ensure environment variables and secrets (.env) work cleanly with Dokploy's secret management
• Test multi-node service distribution (e.g. Ollama on a GPU node, dashboard on another)
• Update boom.sh or provide a Dokploy-native alternative launch path

Priority

Phase 2 — not blocking MVP. Revisit after Beta v0.1.0 ships.

[saadsh15]

I would suggest we use it for other versions we plan to use in the future however if you think it is necessary for this version we can discuss it in a meeting ASAP. Since with dokploy it will create more work in my opinion we can use Lets Encrypt ourselves and provide ssl for out platform.

[BasilSuhail]

Status Update

Parked for Phase 2 (post-beta). As discussed, Lets Encrypt can be handled directly. Dokploy adds complexity not needed for MVP.

Revisit when: Multi-server deployment becomes a real requirement. Not before v0.1.0.

[BasilSuhail]

Dokploy multi-server integration is deferred. Not blocking MVP. Revisit after v0.1.0.

[BasilSuhail]

Status: Blueprint only. Parked.

Dokploy is a Phase 2 target — multi-server management is beyond the current single-node scope. Revisit after v1.0 beta ships. No implementation work done yet.