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Up and Running

This guide walks you through deploying DAIV using Docker Swarm or Docker Compose. DAIV is an AI-powered development assistant that helps teams with code insights, automated issue resolution, and development workflow automation. After completing this guide, you'll have a fully functional DAIV instance ready to connect to your codebase.

What You'll Deploy

DAIV requires several core services to function properly. You'll deploy these services using container orchestration:

Required Core Services:

Optional Service:

  • DAIV Sandbox - Isolated environment for running arbitrary code;
  • MCP Proxy - Proxy MCP server to run other MCP servers inside a container.

Docker Swarm provides better production deployment capabilities including service discovery, load balancing, and rolling updates. This guide covers single-server deployment, but you can extend it to multiple servers using the Docker Swarm documentation.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create Docker Secrets

Before deploying, you must create these Docker secrets. These secrets store sensitive configuration data securely:

Required Secrets:

  • django_secret_key - Random secret key for Django (generate one here)
  • db_password - Random password for the PostgreSQL database
  • codebase_gitlab_auth_token - GitLab personal access token with api scope (see how to create one)
  • codebase_gitlab_webhook_secret - Random secret for GitLab webhook validation
  • codebase_embeddings_api_key - OpenAI API key with access to text-embedding-3-large model
  • daiv_sandbox_api_key - Random API key for Sandbox service authentication
  • openrouter_api_key - OpenRouter API key for LLM access
  • mcp_proxy_auth_token - Random API key for MCP Proxy service authentication

Create each secret using this command (see Docker Secrets documentation for more details):

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docker secret create django_secret_key <secret_key>

Additional Secrets May Be Required

These are the minimal secrets for basic DAIV functionality. Check the Environment Variables page for additional secrets needed for specific features or services.

Step 2: Create stack.yml file

Create your deployment configuration file. This YAML file defines all services, networks, and volumes needed for DAIV.

Customize Environment Variables

Replace all annotated values with your own configuration. See the Environment Variables page for complete configuration options.

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x-app-environment-defaults: &app_environment_defaults
  # DJANGO
  DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE: daiv.settings.production
  DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS: your-hostname.com,app,127.0.0.1 (1)
  DJANGO_REDIS_URL: redis://daiv_redis:6379/0
  DJANGO_BROKER_URL: redis://daiv_redis:6379/0
  DAIV_EXTERNAL_URL: https://your-hostname.com (2)
  # DATABASE
  DB_NAME: daiv
  DB_USER: daiv_admin
  DB_HOST: daiv_db
  DB_SSLMODE: prefer
  # CODEBASE
  CODEBASE_CLIENT: gitlab
  CODEBASE_GITLAB_URL: https://gitlab.com (3)
  # SANDBOX
  DAIV_SANDBOX_URL: http://sandbox:8000 (4)

x-deploy-defaults: &deploy_defaults
  replicas: 1
  update_config:
    order: start-first
    delay: 60s
    failure_action: rollback
  rollback_config:
    parallelism: 0
  restart_policy:
    condition: any
    window: 120s

services:
  db:
    image: pgvector/pgvector:pg17
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=daiv
      - POSTGRES_USER=daiv_admin
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/db_password
    networks:
      - internal
    secrets:
      - db_password
    volumes:
      - db-volume:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    stop_grace_period: 30s
    healthcheck:
      test: pg_isready -q -d $$POSTGRES_DB -U $$POSTGRES_USER
      interval: 10s
      start_period: 120s
    deploy:
      replicas: 1
      update_config:
        failure_action: rollback
        delay: 10s
      rollback_config:
        parallelism: 0
      restart_policy:
        condition: any
        window: 120s

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    networks:
      - internal
    volumes:
      - redis-volume:/data
    healthcheck:
      test: redis-cli ping || exit 1
      interval: 10s
      start_period: 30s
    deploy:
      <<: *deploy_defaults

  app:
    image: ghcr.io/srtab/daiv:latest (5)
    environment:
      <<: *app_environment_defaults
    secrets:
      - django_secret_key
      - db_password
      - codebase_gitlab_auth_token
      - codebase_gitlab_webhook_secret
      - codebase_embeddings_api_key
      - daiv_sandbox_api_key
      - openrouter_api_key
      - mcp_proxy_auth_token
    networks:
      - internal
      - external
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - tantivy-volume:/home/daiv/data/tantivy_index_v1
      - embeddings-volume:/home/daiv/data/embeddings
      - mcp-proxy-volume:/home/daiv/data/mcp-proxy
    deploy:
      <<: *deploy_defaults

  worker:
    image: ghcr.io/srtab/daiv:latest (5)
    command: sh /home/daiv/start-worker
    environment:
      <<: *app_environment_defaults
      CELERY_CONCURRENCY: 2 (6)
    secrets:
      - django_secret_key
      - db_password
      - codebase_gitlab_auth_token
      - codebase_gitlab_webhook_secret
      - codebase_embeddings_api_key
      - daiv_sandbox_api_key
      - openrouter_api_key
      - mcp_proxy_auth_token
    networks:
      - internal
    volumes:
      - tantivy-volume:/home/daiv/data/tantivy_index_v1
      - embeddings-volume:/home/daiv/data/embeddings
      - mcp-proxy-volume:/home/daiv/data/mcp-proxy
    healthcheck:
      test: celery -A daiv inspect ping
      interval: 10s
    deploy:
      <<: *deploy_defaults

  sandbox:
    image: ghcr.io/srtab/daiv-sandbox:latest (5)
    environment:
      DAIV_SANDBOX_KEEP_TEMPLATE: true (7)
    networks:
      - internal
    secrets:
      - daiv_sandbox_api_key
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock (8)
      - $HOME/.docker/config.json:/home/app/.docker/config.json (9)
    deploy:
      <<: *deploy_defaults

  mcp-proxy:
    image: ghcr.io/tbxark/mcp-proxy:latest
    networks:
      - internal
    volumes:
      - mcp-proxy-volume:/config
    deploy:
      <<: *deploy_defaults


networks:
  internal:
    driver: overlay
  external:
    driver: overlay

volumes:
  db-volume:
    driver: local
  redis-volume:
    driver: local
  tantivy-volume:
    driver: local
  embeddings-volume:
    driver: local
  mcp-proxy-volume:
    driver: local

secrets:
  django_secret_key:
    external: true
  db_password:
    external: true
  codebase_gitlab_auth_token:
    external: true
  codebase_gitlab_webhook_secret:
    external: true
  codebase_embeddings_api_key:
    external: true
  daiv_sandbox_api_key:
    external: true
  openrouter_api_key:
    external: true
  mcp_proxy_auth_token:
    external: true
  1. Replace your-hostname.com with your domain name. Don't include the schema (e.g., use daiv.com not https://daiv.com). Keep app and 127.0.0.1 for internal service communication.
  2. Replace with your full domain URL including schema (e.g., https://your-hostname.com)
  3. Set to your GitLab instance URL (e.g., https://gitlab.com for GitLab.com)
  4. Points to the Sandbox service. Use http://sandbox:8000 when deploying Sandbox in the same stack
  5. Recommended: Replace latest with a specific version tag for production deployments
  6. Number of parallel worker processes. Adjust based on your server resources and expected workload
  7. See DAIV Sandbox documentation for configuration details
  8. Required: Sandbox needs Docker socket access to create isolated containers
  9. Optional: Remove this volume if you don't need private registry access

Step 3: Deploy the stack

Deploy your DAIV stack by running this command from the directory containing your stack.yml file:

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docker stack deploy -c stack.yml daiv

Monitor deployment progress with these commands:

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# Check service status with full details
docker stack ps daiv --no-trunc

# Or check running containers
docker ps

Deployment Time

Services may take several minutes to become fully healthy, especially during the initial deployment when images are being pulled and databases are being initialized.

Step 4: ⏭️ Next steps

Your DAIV deployment is now running! Follow the Reverse Proxy guide below to configure external access, then proceed to connect your first repository.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose provides simpler deployment suitable for development environments or smaller production setups. This method uses a single configuration file to manage all services.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create docker-compose.yml file

Create your Docker Compose configuration. This file defines all services and their configurations in a single place.

Environment Variable Configuration

Replace all annotated values with your specific configuration. See the Environment Variables page for additional options.

YAML
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x-app-defaults: &x_app_default
  image: ghcr.io/srtab/daiv:latest
  restart: unless-stopped
  environment:
    DJANGO_SECRET_KEY: secret-key (1)
    DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS: your-hostname.com,app,127.0.0.1 (2)
    DJANGO_REDIS_URL: redis://redis:6379/0
    DJANGO_BROKER_URL: redis://redis:6379/0
    DAIV_EXTERNAL_URL: https://your-hostname.com (12)
    # Database settings
    DB_HOST: db
    DB_NAME: daiv
    DB_USER: daiv
    DB_PASSWORD: daivpass (3)
    DB_SSLMODE: prefer
    # Codebase settings
    CODEBASE_CLIENT: gitlab
    CODEBASE_GITLAB_URL: https://gitlab.com (4)
    CODEBASE_GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN: gitlab-auth-token (5)
    CODEBASE_GITLAB_WEBHOOK_SECRET: gitlab-webhook-secret (6)
    CODEBASE_EMBEDDINGS_API_KEY: openai-api-key (7)
    # LLM Providers settings
    OPENROUTER_API_KEY: openrouter-api-key (8)
    # Sandbox settings
    DAIV_SANDBOX_API_KEY: daiv-sandbox-api-key (9)
    # MCP Proxy settings
    MCP_PROXY_AUTH_TOKEN: mcp-proxy-auth-token (13)
  volumes:
    - tantivy-volume:/home/app/data/tantivy_index_v1
    - embeddings-volume:/home/app/data/embeddings
    - mcp-proxy-volume:/home/app/data/mcp-proxy

services:
  db:
    image: pgvector/pgvector:pg17
    container_name: daiv-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: daiv
      POSTGRES_USER: daiv
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: daivpass (10)
    volumes:
      - db-volume:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U daiv -d daiv"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 10s
      start_period: 30s
      retries: 5
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"

  redis:
    image: redis:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    container_name: daiv-redis
    volumes:
      - redis-volume:/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5
    ports:
      - "6379:6379"

  app:
    <<: *x_app_default
    container_name: daiv-app
    command: sh /home/app/docker/start-app
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
        restart: true
      redis:
        condition: service_healthy
        restart: true
      sandbox:
        condition: service_healthy

  worker:
    <<: *x_app_default
    container_name: daiv-worker
    command: sh /home/app/docker/start-worker
    environment:
      C_FORCE_ROOT: true
    ports: []
    depends_on:
      app:
        condition: service_healthy
        restart: true

  sandbox:
    image: ghcr.io/srtab/daiv-sandbox:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    container_name: daiv-sandbox
    environment:
      DAIV_SANDBOX_API_KEY: daiv-sandbox-api-key (11)
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - $HOME/.docker/config.json:/home/app/.docker/config.json

  mcp-proxy:
    image: ghcr.io/tbxark/mcp-proxy:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    container_name: daiv-mcp-proxy
    volumes:
      - mcp-proxy-volume:/config
    ports:
      - "9090:9090"
    depends_on:
      app:
        condition: service_healthy
        restart: true

volumes:
  db-volume:
    driver: local
  redis-volume:
    driver: local
  tantivy-volume:
    driver: local
  embeddings-volume:
    driver: local
  mcp-proxy-volume:
    driver: local
  1. Generate a Django secret key - Use a cryptographically secure random string
  2. Replace with your domain name - Don't include schema (e.g., daiv.com)
  3. Generate a secure random password for the database
  4. Set your GitLab instance URL (e.g., https://gitlab.com)
  5. Create a GitLab personal access token with api scope permissions (see how to create one)
  6. Generate a random webhook secret for GitLab webhook validation
  7. Get an OpenAI API key with access to text-embedding-3-large model
  8. Get an OpenRouter API key for LLM model access
  9. Generate a random API key for Sandbox service authentication
  10. Use the same password as defined in annotation 3
  11. Use the same API key as defined in annotation 9
  12. Include the full URL with schema (e.g., https://your-hostname.com)
  13. Generate a random API key for MCP Proxy service authentication

Step 2: Run the compose file

Start all DAIV services by running this command from the directory containing your docker-compose.yml:

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docker compose up -d

Check service status to ensure everything is running correctly:

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docker compose ps

Step 3: ⏭️ Next steps

Your DAIV instance is now operational! Continue with the Reverse Proxy configuration below, then proceed to connect your first repository.

Reverse Proxy

Configure a reverse proxy to provide secure external access to your DAIV instance. This setup enables HTTPS access and proper domain routing.

This guide covers Nginx configuration. Basic Nginx knowledge is assumed.

Contributions Welcome

Only Nginx configuration is provided currently. Contributions for Apache, Traefik, and other reverse proxy configurations are welcome!

Prerequisites

  • Nginx installed
  • Valid SSL certificate for your domain
  • Domain name pointing to your server

Step 1: Configure Nginx

Create a new Nginx configuration file at /etc/nginx/conf.d/daiv.conf (path may vary by operating system).

Add this configuration and customize the annotated values:

Nginx Configuration File
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upstream daiv-instance {
  server internal-ip:8000;  (1)
}

server {
  listen              443 ssl;
  listen              [::]:443 ssl;

  http2               on;

  server_name         your-hostname.com;  (2)

  # SSL Configuration.
  # You can use this https://ssl-config.mozilla.org/ to generate
  # the correct ssl configuration for your server.
  ssl_certificate      /etc/pki/tls/certs/ssl.crt;  (3)
  ssl_certificate_key  /etc/pki/tls/private/ssl.key;  (4)

  ssl_protocols TLSv1.3;
  ssl_ecdh_curve X25519:prime256v1:secp384r1;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;

  location / {
    proxy_pass              http://daiv-instance;
    proxy_set_header        Host $host;
    proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_redirect          off;
    proxy_buffering         off;
    proxy_connect_timeout   60;
    proxy_send_timeout      60;
    proxy_read_timeout      60;

    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000" always;
  }
}

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
  1. Set the internal IP of your DAIV instance. Use localhost or 127.0.0.1 if running on the same server
  2. Replace with your domain name (e.g., daiv.example.com)
  3. Update the SSL certificate path - Location varies by operating system
  4. Update the SSL certificate key path - Location varies by operating system

Step 2: Restart Nginx

Apply the configuration changes by restarting Nginx:

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systemctl restart nginx

Verify the configuration by accessing your domain in a web browser. You should see the DAIV interface.

🚀 Final Steps and Repository Configuration

Congratulations! Your DAIV instance is now running and accessible. To start using DAIV with your repositories, follow these essential next steps:

1. Connect Your First Repository

Your next step is connecting DAIV to your GitLab repositories. This process involves:

  • Creating GitLab personal access tokens
  • Configuring repository webhooks
  • Indexing repository content
  • Setting up automated workflows\

📖 Follow the complete repository setup guide: Repository Configuration

2. What You Can Do After Configuration

Once your repository is connected, DAIV will automatically:

  • Respond to issues - DAIV analyzes issues and suggests solutions or implementation plans
  • Review pull requests - Automated code review and suggestions for improvements
  • Address pipeline failures - Investigates CI/CD failures and proposes fixes
  • Answer code questions - Provides context-aware responses about your codebase

3. Monitoring Your Instance

Keep track of your DAIV deployment:

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# Check service health (Docker Swarm)
docker stack ps daiv

# Check service health (Docker Compose)
docker compose ps

# View application logs
docker logs <container_name>

4. Getting Help

If you encounter issues during setup:

  • Check the logs for error messages and debugging information
  • Review the Environment Variables for configuration options
  • Verify network connectivity between services and external APIs
  • Ensure all secrets and API keys are valid and have proper permissions
  • Ask for help on the GitHub Discussions