Controller98 v0.2.0-alpha (Experimental) - Heterogeneous Infrastructure Manager

File Edit View Orchestration Tunnels Help

⚠️

EXPERIMENTAL ALPHA PRE-RELEASE (VERSION < 1.0) — HOMELAB & NON-PRODUCTION ONLY

Controller98 is in active experimental pre-release development. It is NOT a stable production release. Built strictly for homelabs, enthusiast experimentation, and self-hosted testing environments. Do NOT deploy in commercial, enterprise, or mission-critical production infrastructure. Interfaces, database schemas, and CLI commands are subject to breaking changes prior to v1.0. Notice: Tested exclusively on Ubuntu 26.04 so far.

ALPHA PRE-RELEASE < 1.0 • TESTED ONLY ON UBUNTU 26.04 SO FAR • PURE GO • < 20 MB RAM

Infrastructure Orchestration with Pure Go Simplicity.

Controller98 is an ultra-lightweight, heterogeneous container, Kubernetes, and tunnel gateway manager designed with zero client-side JavaScript dependencies and an authentic retro desktop interface.

~12.1 MiB

Measured Idle RAM

0 KB

Client JS Payloads

Pure Go

Single Executable

4 Ingress Modes

Self-Signed / CF / ngrok / ACME

📖 Explore Full Documentation 🐳 Docker Hub Image

⚡ 10-Second Quickstart (Docker CLI)

Run anywhere in host networking mode with native Docker and Kubernetes access:

BASH (Run on Host or Server)

docker run -d \
  --name controller98 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --network host \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v ~/.kube/config:/root/.kube/config:ro \
  -v controller-data:/app/data \
  rafaeltre/controller98:latest

💡

Tested Platform & Defaults

Tested exclusively on Ubuntu 26.04 so far. Navigate to http://localhost:8080. Setup wizard initializes the administrator account on first boot with Argon2id cryptographic hashing.

🌟 Core Architectural Subsystems

🐳 Docker Engine & Compose Studio

Complete container lifecycle control: run, start, pause, resume, restart, and inspect streaming logs. Built-in Compose Studio with YAML schema editing, live stack deployment, and active project auto-detection.

Zero-latency Docker socket API bindings
Real-time image pull and layer inspection
Volume and virtual network diagnostics

☸️ Kubernetes & Helm Orchestration

Inspect and control your clusters through mounted ~/.kube/config. View Pods, Services, Nodes, and Deployments. Trigger zero-downtime rollout restarts and scale replica counts with one click.

Live Pod log streaming & restart triggers
Deployment scaling & rollouts
Helm Release inspection and management

🌐 Network Neighborhood (Multi-Node)

Orchestrate heterogeneous infrastructure across bare metal, Raspberry Pis, and secondary servers. Lightweight remote agent daemons report system telemetry and bridge remote Docker engines.

Micro-agent daemon mode (MODE=agent)
Real-time ICMP/TCP latency heartbeats
Multi-node container and host inspection

🛡️ Ingress Gateway & HTTPS Tunnels

Zero-config public accessibility and TLS termination. Pure Go ECDSA certificate generation on port 443, Cloudflare Quick & Named Tunnels, ngrok streaming, and automated Let's Encrypt ACME HTTP-01 challenges.

Unified Multi-Service Path Ingress (/grafana, /ollama)
Cloudflare Tunnels with zero keys required
Retro Entrypoint assistant for container wrapping

🤖 Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server

Connect AI coding assistants and agents (Claude Desktop, Cursor, AGY) directly to your infrastructure. Controller98 exposes full DevOps tools via Stdio (retro-mcp) and HTTP Server-Sent Events (/mcp/sse).

Full tool discovery: docker, k8s, tunnels, stats
Bearer PAT token security
Instant integration with Claude Desktop JSON

🔐 Security, RBAC & REST API

Enterprise security without the overhead: Argon2id password hashing, disaster recovery CLI password reset commands, Role-Based Access Control (Admin, Operator, Viewer), and Personal Access Tokens (PATs).

CLI password recovery (reset-password)
Bearer token authenticated REST API
Strict CSRF protection and security headers

📊 Benchmark & Architecture Comparison Matrix

Controller98 is specifically engineered for resource-constrained environments (edge nodes, VPS, Raspberry Pis, homeservers) where memory cannot be wasted on heavy JavaScript single-page application runtimes:

Platform	Idle Memory Footprint	Backend Engine	Client Architecture	Native Tunnels	Native MCP Server
Controller98	~12.1 MiB	Pure Go Static Binary	Zero-JS SSR (98.css)	Built-in (4 Modes)	Stdio + SSE
Portainer CE	~140 - 220 MiB	Go + Docker Client	Heavy Angular / React SPA	Manual Setup	No
Rancher	~2,048+ MiB	Java / Go / Microservices	Heavy React / Vue SPA	Complex Ingress	No
Lens Desktop	~800 - 1,500 MiB	Electron / Node.js	Electron Client App	No	No

🏗️ Controller98 Unified Heterogeneous Architecture

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                 CONTROLLER98 PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE                              |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
                                                 |
         +---------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
         |                                       |                                       |
  [ Docker Daemon ]                       [ K8s API Server ]                     [ Remote Agents ]
   unix:///var/run/docker.sock             ~/.kube/config                         Network Neighborhood
   - Container Lifecycle                   - Pods & Deployments                   - Edge Nodes
   - Compose Stacks                        - Replica Scaling                      - Raspberry Pis
   - Images & Volumes                      - Helm Releases                        - Bare Metal
         |                                       |                                       |
         +---------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
                                                 |
                                     [ Controller98 Core ]
                                     - Pure Go HTTP Server
                                     - SQLite Embedded DB
                                     - Argon2id RBAC
                                     - Idle Footprint: ~12 MiB
                                                 |
         +---------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
         |                                       |                                       |
  [ Ingress Gateway ]                     [ Win98 Web UI ]                        [ MCP AI Protocol ]
   - Self-Signed ECDSA TLS (443)           - Zero-JS SSR (HTML)                   - Stdio (retro-mcp)
   - Cloudflare Quick Tunnel               - Retro Desktop Windows                - HTTP SSE (/mcp/sse)
   - ngrok Secure Tunnel                   - Realtime Diagnostics                 - Cursor / Claude Desktop
   - Let's Encrypt ACME                    - Low-Resource Friendly                - AGY Autonomous Agents
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+