Docker Self-Hosting for Signet Daemon
Context
Signet has strong self-hosting guidance for systemd and launchd, but no first-class Docker deployment artifacts. Teams running VM/container infrastructure currently hand-roll container images, reverse proxy config, and auth bootstrapping.
Findings
- Signet daemon already supports container-friendly network variables
(
SIGNET_BIND,SIGNET_PORT,SIGNET_PATH) and health checks (/health). - Team-mode auth is safer for exposed deployments, but bootstrap requires an initial admin token path.
- Persistent workspace storage is mandatory because Signet state spans SQLite, config files, and auth secret material.
- Reverse proxy termination is already documented for nginx/Caddy and can be standardized in Compose.
- Multi-arch image publishing (amd64/arm64) is needed for cloud VMs plus Apple Silicon hosts.
Implications
A complete Docker baseline should include:
- canonical image build contract
- Compose stack with proxy and named persistent volumes
- explicit token bootstrap flow for team mode
- upgrade + backup runbook
- CI guardrails (image build + runtime smoke)