sphericon

Open-core marketing automation you can run yourself. sphericon helps a business know its audience and talk to it at the right moment: it collects who your contacts are and what they do on your site or in your product, groups them into segments, and sends them email — one-off broadcasts, automated sequences triggered by their behavior, and transactional messages.

It looks after the unglamorous part too: unsubscribes, bounces and spam complaints are honored automatically, so you never write to someone who asked you to stop, and your sender reputation stays intact. Everything lives in your own workspace on your own infrastructure, so the customer data stays yours. The goal is a self-hostable alternative to tools like Drip, without the lock-in.

Documentation: https://docs.getsphericon.app/

Stack

A Go backend and a React/Vite frontend in a single repo. The data model is workspace-scoped (multi-tenant): contacts, events, API tokens, and tracking entities all belong to a workspace.

• Backend — Go + ogen (HTTP servers in gen/*), ORM ent, queues river, pub/sub watermill, migrations via Atlas.
• Frontend — React 19 + Vite, Mantine, TanStack Router/Query, and the generated @hey-api/openapi-ts client + react-query hooks.
• API contracts — TypeSpec as the single source of truth.

Code generation

The pipeline is one-directional: TypeSpec → OpenAPI → generated Go + TS. Never hand-edit anything under openapi/, gen/, ent/ (except ent/schema/), or src/generated/ / packages/analytics/src/generated/ — regenerate instead.

typespec/{site,external,collect}   ──tsp compile──▶  openapi/*.openapi.json
  openapi/site      ──ogen──▶ gen/site       (Go server)  ──openapi-ts──▶ src/generated/site (TS client + react-query + zod)
  openapi/external  ──ogen──▶ gen/external   (Go server)
  openapi/collect   ──ogen──▶ gen/collect    (Go server)  ──openapi-ts──▶ packages/analytics/src/generated/collect (types only)
ent/schema/*.go     ──entc──▶ ent/*          (Go ORM)

mise run generate          # full cycle: typespec → openapi → backend (ent + ogen) → frontend → i18n types → format
mise run generate:typespec # typespec → openapi only
mise run generate:backend  # openapi → Go only (ent + ogen)
mise run generate:openapi  # openapi → TS client only

After changing TypeSpec or ent/schema, run mise run generate and commit the generated output.

Development

The only prerequisite is mise. It installs and pins the whole toolchain from .mise.toml / mise.lock (Go, Node, pnpm, golangci-lint, atlas, air, Caddy, Mailpit, gitleaks, jactionlint, zizmor, hk, …), runs the dev stack as daemons and installs the git hooks.

mise install # install the pinned toolchain (also installs the git hooks)
mise run setup   # install deps, start Postgres, create dev/test/atlas DBs, migrate, seed
mise run dev     # start the whole dev stack (mise daemons)
mise run test    # creates test DB, then `go test -p 1 ./...`
mise run check   # tsc, oxlint, oxfmt --check, knip, golangci-lint, govulncheck, gitleaks, jactionlint, zizmor
mise run generate # regenerate TypeSpec → OpenAPI → Go + TS

CI installs the same toolchain with jdx/mise-action and runs the same mise tasks (mise tasks lists them all).

Deployment (development)

The local stack is a set of mise daemons ([daemons] in .mise.toml) behind Caddy with HTTPS.

1. Install the toolchain, install deps, create the dev/test/atlas databases, migrate:

   mise install
   mise run setup

   No .env is required: .mise.toml supplies the dev defaults, including DATABASE_URL (mise run db:up starts the Postgres behind it). Do not set DATABASE_URL in .env (real env vars win over it). Personal overrides go in the gitignored .env (read by the app) or .mise.local.toml (read by mise).

2. Trust Caddy's local CA once, so the browser accepts https://sphericon.localhost:

   caddy trust

3. Start the stack:

   mise run dev        # mise daemons start caddy (starts everything it depends on)
   mise run dev:down   # stop it
   mise daemons logs backend   # follow a daemon's output; `mise daemons ls` shows status

The entry point is https://sphericon.localhost (Caddy terminates TLS with its internal CA). Daemons:

Daemon	URL / port	Notes
caddy	:443	TLS + routing, see Caddyfile
frontend	:5173 (Vite)	proxied by Caddy
backend	:3300	proxied by Caddy under /site, /api, /collect, /auth
db	127.0.0.1:15432	one mise postgres preset server for all checkouts (mise run db:up)
mailpit	http://localhost:8025	captured outbound email (SMTP UI on :1025)

These are the primary checkout's ports. A linked git worktree gets offset ports and its own origin (https://<dir>.sphericon.localhost:<port>, printed by mise env), so stacks never collide; there caddy trust --address "$CADDY_ADMIN" trusts Caddy's CA. Postgres is one server for every checkout (the primary's db daemon, started by mise run db:up); each checkout gets its own databases on it, named sphericon_<dir>. See AGENTS.md, "Common commands" and "Dev environment".

The backend runs the real Go server under air for hot reload. Migrations run via Atlas (mise run db:migrate); the dev backend itself does not self-migrate. On Linux, binding :443 needs net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0. The old Grafana/OTLP dev container is gone: leave OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT unset (the dev stack serves Prometheus metrics on 127.0.0.1:9090/metrics via the opt-in METRICS_ADDR; see ADR 0018) or point it at your own collector.

Deployment (production)

The server ships as a self-contained static binary: the React SPA, the t.js tracker, and the database migrations are all embedded (go:embed, built with -tags embed_spa). No Node.js, no Atlas CLI, and no extra runtime dependencies are needed.

Docker image

Published to ghcr.io/getsphericon/sphericon (multi-arch, linux amd64/arm64) on every release, tagged with the version and latest.

docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e APP_ENV=production \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@host:5432/sphericon?sslmode=require" \
  -e APP_URL="https://example.com" \
  -e JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e AUTO_MIGRATE=true \
  ghcr.io/getsphericon/sphericon:latest

To build from source instead, use the multi-stage Dockerfile (node build → Go build → Alpine runtime): docker build -t sphericon ..

Binary

Release archives (sphericon_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz) are attached to each GitHub Release for linux and darwin (amd64/arm64). To build locally:

mise run build    # → bin/sphericon (build:tracker + build:spa + go build -tags embed_spa)

Run it:

./bin/sphericon migrate   # apply pending migrations and exit
./bin/sphericon           # start the server (listens on $PORT, default 3000)
./bin/sphericon version   # print build metadata

Migrations

Two options:

• Separate step (recommended) — run sphericon migrate before starting the server (an init container, release job, or manual step). Safe for multi-replica deploys.
• On startup — set AUTO_MIGRATE=true and the binary applies pending migrations in-process before serving. Use only for single-replica deploys against a fresh database.

The production binary tracks applied migrations (via goose) in its own goose_db_version table. The dev Atlas CLI flow (mise run db:migrate) uses Atlas's atlas_schema_revisions table — never point AUTO_MIGRATE at a database previously managed by the Atlas CLI dev flow.

Configuration

Configuration is read from the environment (and, if present, .env files). Every variable, its default and its meaning are listed in docs/self-hosting.md, the one place to add a new one; it also covers deploying with Docker or the single binary, migrations and health checks.

License

sphericon is open-core. The core is licensed under the GNU AGPL-3.0 (LICENSE); the Enterprise features under ee/ are commercial and source-available (ee/LICENSE). See LICENSING.md for the boundary.

Security

To report a vulnerability, see SECURITY.md.