# Hostly Documentation

> Deploy and manage containerized services on Hostly, from the dashboard or via MCP.

Hostly is a hosting platform for containerized applications. Users push Docker images to the
Hostly Registry (`registry.hostly.ninja`) or an external registry and deploy them as services
inside a workspace. A workspace holds services, members, secrets, domains, a plan, and billing.
A service is either public (Hostly subdomain or custom domain) or internal (no public URL, e.g.
databases). Services of a workspace reach each other at `<service-name>:<port>`. Services without
a port, e.g. background workers, are supported as well.

Hostly provides an MCP server at `https://api.hostly.ninja/mcp` (Streamable HTTP, OAuth sign-in
with the user's Hostly account). It lets AI assistants list workspaces and services, deploy and
update services, change their state, read logs and health, and manage secrets, registry images,
external registries, and domains. The assistant acts with the permissions of the signed-in user.

Connect from a terminal:

```bash
# Claude Code (then run /mcp in Claude Code to sign in)
claude mcp add --transport http hostly https://api.hostly.ninja/mcp

# Codex CLI
codex mcp add hostly --url https://api.hostly.ninja/mcp
codex mcp login hostly
```

The documentation is also available in German under `/de/`.

## Table of Contents

### Getting Started

- [Getting started with Hostly](https://docs.hostly.ninja/getting-started.md)
- [Create a workspace](https://docs.hostly.ninja/getting-started/create-workspace.md)
- [Push your first image](https://docs.hostly.ninja/getting-started/push-first-image.md)
- [Deploy your first service](https://docs.hostly.ninja/getting-started/deploy-service.md)
- [Manage a service](https://docs.hostly.ninja/getting-started/manage-service.md)
- [Next steps](https://docs.hostly.ninja/getting-started/next-steps.md)

### Hostly Concepts

- [Hostly Concepts](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts.md)
- [Account and Workspace](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/account-and-workspace.md)
- [What is a Service?](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/service.md)
- [Hostly Registry](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/hostly-registry.md)
- [Hostly Domains and Domain Fragments](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/domains-and-domain-fragments.md)
- [Dashboard Basics](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/dashboard-basics.md)
- [Resource Usage and Limits](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/resources-and-limits.md)
- [Service Status and Lifecycle](https://docs.hostly.ninja/concepts/service-status-and-lifecycle.md)

### Use Cases and Examples

- [Use Cases and Examples](https://docs.hostly.ninja/use-cases.md)
- [Example: Web app with PostgreSQL](https://docs.hostly.ninja/use-cases/web-app-with-postgres.md)
- [Example: Background worker with a queue](https://docs.hostly.ninja/use-cases/background-worker.md)

### Connect to MCP

- [Connect to MCP](https://docs.hostly.ninja/connect-mcp.md)
- [Connect ChatGPT](https://docs.hostly.ninja/connect-mcp/chatgpt.md)
- [Connect Claude](https://docs.hostly.ninja/connect-mcp/claude.md)
- [Connect LM Studio](https://docs.hostly.ninja/connect-mcp/lmstudio.md)

### Other

- [Frequently Asked Questions](https://docs.hostly.ninja/faq.md)