Pulse

Real-time Proxmox, Docker and Kubernetes monitoring that finds what needs attention.

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Pulse is a self-hosted dashboard and alerting tool for your homelab or infrastructure. Point it at Proxmox, Docker, Kubernetes, TrueNAS, vSphere or your own Linux, Windows and macOS machines, and it shows their health in one place, keeps the history, and tells you when something needs attention: a failed backup, a filling disk, an unhealthy container, a node that dropped offline.

Want to look around first? The live demo runs on sample data and signs you in automatically.

What Pulse does

• Gives each platform its own page. Proxmox, Docker, Kubernetes, TrueNAS, vSphere and machines each get a view that matches how you already think about them, with storage and backups beside the systems they belong to.
• Alerts you when it matters. Set thresholds for CPU, memory, disk, temperature and more, and get notified by email or through Discord, Slack, Teams, Telegram, ntfy, Gotify, Pushover, PagerDuty or any webhook.
• Checks the things that can't run an agent. Ping, TCP, UDP and HTTP(S) availability checks cover routers, printers and web services, with certificate-expiry warnings.
• Keeps history. Every guest, container and host has charts: seven days in Community, ninety in Pro.
• Optional AI checks. Connect your own AI provider or a local model and Pulse Patrol runs scheduled checks for problems a dashboard only shows if someone is looking. An MCP adapter lets clients such as Claude Code and OpenCode query Pulse.
• Stays hands-off by default. Proxmox is read through a read-only API token, credentials are encrypted at rest, and agent commands stay off unless you turn them on.

Supported platforms

Platform	What Pulse shows
Proxmox VE, PBS and PMG	Nodes, VMs and containers, storage, backups, replication, Ceph and mail gateways
Docker and Podman	Hosts, containers, Compose projects, Swarm services, health, images and updates
Kubernetes	Clusters, nodes, workloads, pods, services, storage and events
TrueNAS SCALE and CORE	Pools, datasets, disks, snapshots, replication tasks, apps and VMs
Linux, Windows and macOS	Host health, filesystems, networking, temperatures, RAID and availability
VMware vSphere (early access)	Hosts, clusters, VMs, datastores, networks and snapshots; validate against your own vCenter before relying on it

Install

Pulse is one container or service listening on port 7655. Pick an exact version from the latest release and use it in place of vX.Y.Z below.

Docker

docker run -d \
  --name pulse \
  -p 7655:7655 \
  -v pulse_data:/data \
  -e PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_METHOD=docker_run \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  rcourtman/pulse:vX.Y.Z

The Pulse container does not need the Docker socket. Docker hosts are monitored by the agent described below.

Proxmox LXC or Linux

The installer is signed. This block downloads it, verifies it against the pinned pulse-installer key, and only then runs it:

export PULSE_VERSION=vX.Y.Z
curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse/releases/download/${PULSE_VERSION}/install.sh" &&
curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse/releases/download/${PULSE_VERSION}/install.sh.sshsig" &&
ssh-keygen -Y verify \
  -f <(printf '%s\n' 'pulse-installer namespaces="pulse-install" ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIMZd/DaH+BldzOkq1A8KVTcFk73nAyrE8aJOyf7i00jm pulse-installer') \
  -I pulse-installer \
  -n pulse-install \
  -s install.sh.sshsig < install.sh &&
bash install.sh --version "${PULSE_VERSION}"

Paste the whole block. If a download or the signature check fails, it stops; don't run the last line on its own to get past a failure.

Also available: Docker Compose, Kubernetes with Helm and the full install guide.

First run

Open http://<your-ip>:7655 and paste the one-time setup token. Get it with docker exec pulse /app/pulse bootstrap-token on Docker, or sudo pulse bootstrap-token on Linux (the LXC installer prints the exact command). Create your admin account, then add your first system with Add infrastructure under Settings → Infrastructure.

Do you need an agent?

Often not. Proxmox VE, PBS and PMG are monitored through their API with a read-only token, so no Pulse host agent is required; the generated setup script creates a privilege-separated monitoring user. Install the unified agent where an API can't give Pulse what you want: Docker and Podman hosts, Kubernetes, standalone machines, or host SMART health and temperatures.

Agents, including v5-to-v6 agent upgrades, are installed with the per-host command under Settings → Infrastructure → Install on a host. The GitHub installer above is for the Pulse server only. Command execution is off by default, the agent's local listener binds to localhost, and on Linux --least-privilege runs it as a dedicated non-root user. The agent security model lists what it can and cannot do at each privilege level.

Warning

API-only does not mean guest-agent-free. VM filesystem and memory requests through QEMU Guest Agent can share the channel used by freeze-enabled backups. Read-only permissions do not prove backup safety. Do not add permissions, enable or restart an agent, or send manual guest-agent probes during a backup, freeze or thaw. An OK backup task does not prove successful thaw. Stopping Pulse also stops its monitoring and alerts. Read the backup safety precaution before you need it.

Editions

• Community (free, this repository): self-hosted monitoring, seven days of metric history, core SSO, update alerts, and Patrol with your own AI provider or a local model.
• Pro: Community plus Patrol investigation and fixes, ninety days of history, centralized agent profiles, RBAC, audit logging and reporting.
• MSP: one Pulse Account running isolated workspaces for each client, with separate dashboards, alerts, users, audit history and reports. Try it free for sixty days with two clients at Pulse for MSPs.

Core self-hosted monitoring is not gated by how many systems or child resources you monitor. See the capability reference and current plans.

Important

GitHub release assets and rcourtman/pulse images are Community builds. Pro, Relay and eligible legacy customers should install the private image or Linux archive from the Pulse download portal. Replacing a private Pro runtime with a Community build removes its private runtime hooks.

Relay is no longer sold. Existing subscribers keep Pro features at their current price for as long as their subscription continues, and paired phones keep working until 31 March 2027. Relay connects the app, not the web UI: use your own VPN or tunnel for remote access, and add an ntfy, Gotify or Pushover destination for phone alerts.

Documentation

• Install · Production security · Upgrading from v5 · Configuration
• Platform and agent guides · Pulse Intelligence · Releases and update channels
• Troubleshooting · API · Architecture · Security · Privacy · Code signing

Getting started in other languages: Deutsch · Español

Community and support

• Questions and ideas: GitHub Discussions
• Bugs and unexpected behaviour: GitHub Issues
• Home Assistant: community-maintained Pulse add-ons
• Support development: GitHub Sponsors or Ko-fi

Before filing a bug, read the safe reporting guidance. Your original evidence is enough. A second reproduction or diagnostics export is not required, so please don't repeat anything that could interrupt workloads or send duplicate notifications. GitHub reports and attachments are public: review them locally and keep credentials and private details out.

Development

Pulse is Go 1.26 with a SolidJS and TypeScript frontend. The managed dev runtime serves the frontend at http://127.0.0.1:5173 and proxies API and WebSocket traffic to the backend on port 7655.

npm ci
npm --prefix frontend-modern ci
npm run dev

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before starting on a change: Pulse works issue-first and does not normally accept unsolicited pull requests.

License

Everything in this repository is MIT licensed, with no dual licensing and no source-available code. Pulse Pro is a separate commercial product built from private sources, sold through pulserelay.pro under Terms of Service that apply to that product only.