System requirements

Helpin runs on any Linux or macOS machine that can run Docker. The figures below are the minimum for an evaluation. Size production servers for your own conversation volume, attachments, and AI usage, and watch them as you grow.

Hardware

Resource	Minimum
Memory	8 GB available to Docker
Disk	20 GiB free on the installation filesystem, plus room on Docker's data disk for images and volumes
Architecture	amd64 or arm64

These are starting points, not capacity guarantees. Agent workloads (chat, agent runs, and code execution) share one worker, so size CPU and memory for your busiest AI usage. Attachments and help center images live in object storage and grow over time.

helpin doctor and helpin install accept 7.5 GiB of available memory or more, which covers an 8 GB server. They warn from 6 GiB and fail below that.

Software

Requirement	Notes
Linux or macOS	Any modern distribution. Native Windows isn't supported, so use a Linux VM or WSL with a Docker engine
Docker Engine or Docker Desktop	With the Docker Compose v2 plugin (docker compose)
Bash, OpenSSL, curl	Usually preinstalled
sha256sum or shasum	Verifies downloads

Network

For local evaluation, nothing needs to be public. Helpin listens on localhost:8085 (app), 8086 (help center), and 9005 (files).

For a public server:

• Three DNS names pointing at the server, for the app, help center, and files. For example app., help., and files.example.com.

• Inbound ports 80 and 443. With built-in HTTPS they must be free on the host, because Helpin's Caddy proxy listens on them. With your own proxy, they belong to that proxy. Nothing else should be public.

• Outbound HTTPS to your container registry, your AI providers, your SMTP server, and (built-in HTTPS) Let's Encrypt.

Optional services

Service	Needed for
SMTP server	Invitations, password resets, and notifications
An OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter API key	AI agents. OpenAI or OpenRouter also power semantic knowledge search
GitHub organization	Connecting repositories and coding agents

Everything else, including the database, cache, queues, workflow engine, and object storage, ships inside the bundle.