ONCE is back! It's now a full-fledged application server for running dockerized web apps, like Campfire/Writebook/Fizzy or your own vibe-coded adventures. Zero-downtime upgrades, scheduled backups, and a gorgeous TUI with hyperdrive graphics. Enjoy!

We've also just open-sourced Writebook fully! Help us make it better now that the repo is on GitHub.

How’s it different to Kamal?

thank you for the release! what's the difference with Kamal?

You are becoming an open source powerhouse. We have installed Fizzy within our private cloud to track tasks and even customer support requests. Even if some internal information of customer info is included in the ticket, we have piece of mind, no third party person has access to it and it’s totally secure and withing our environment. A powerful component for our HIPPA and SOC2.

Zero-downtime upgrades for dockerized apps is a game-changer for production stability.

This is fkng cool. So Kamal deploys apps and ONCE hosts and manages apps. With this its much easier to run other people's apps next to yours. Almost like your own little Coolify 🥳

Man I love these videos. And I need to use once now. Your love for computers is so infectious

once is back and fully open source now dhh shipping while everyone else debates frameworks

@GregMolnar Really cool. But man, this vibecoding thing is tiring… What a nauseating feeling…😣

The gap nobody talks about: build an app in 30 minutes with AI, spend 3 days deploying it. ONCE as the default runtime for vibe-coded apps closes the loop. Same lesson we learned with agents - the shipping infrastructure matters more than the building tool.

You guys just keep on cooking! Well done 🤝

zero-downtime upgrades for your vibe-coded adventures is genuinely the most 2026 product description i've read

nice... we're getting close!

Campfire is great! Thanks to you and the team for it!

gonna try this these days when I got time, looks wonderful!

@dvassallo This is amazing! You had me at TUI!

actually I think we don't need TUI... we need apis and agent skills to let ai do the devops stuff

It's also a cli, dude. Maybe take just five seconds to look at the gift before you start complaining about what it already has.

ah, thanks! My apologies!

actually it has only this word... if you are open to something like skill.md I will contribute!

trying it now!

I use docker compose for self hosting most of the projects and I'm working on a similar idea as well, I will give this a try as well. Nice work 😁.

This kind of tooling is underrated. Builders want fewer layers between code, deployment, backups, and recovery.

Love this. I'm running into numerous bugs installing Campfire / Writebook / Fizzy on my M2 Air. Should we start submitting GitHub issues on those bugs (no secret key generation, app crashes, bad health checks, etc.), or give you some time first to work out the kinks?

Do file a ticket with details. We've been focused on Linux, so probably need some testing on macOS.

Yes!

Love the ONCE approach. Self-hosted, pay-once, no subscriptions. Building GetBackTo on Rails 8 monolith for the same reason - solo founders need infrastructure that just works without monthly costs spiraling. Kamal + Solid Queue/Cache means zero Redis, zero complexity. Ship fast, run cheap.

You are essentially making gen1 of blocklet servers from components. 🤯

I like this. It’s the same premise I have for building Slipway but for Sails.js apps It’s like Render but you host it yourself and it gives you so much more

this is nice, tui for humans cli layer for agents

Niiiice 👍

This is really awesome, thank you @DHH

Love seeing this, David! I'll ditch kamal and go to ONCE for all of my 37signals apps. Thanks so much!

whoa! its beautiful

getting minikube and k9s vibes

37signals spent $3.2M a year on AWS. Bought $700K in servers. Now saving $2M a year. Self-hosting market went from $15.6B in 2024 to a projected $85B by 2034. ONCE making Docker self-hosting one-click is the natural endgame. Own your infra or rent it forever.

Looks like i ditched k3s + various dashboards just in time! Looks very good!

@dvassallo GTFO. 🔥

The "own your stack" philosophy is underrated. We run most of our client automation infra on self-hosted setups and the ops overhead is real but so is the margin. Handing $3k/mo to SaaS vendors for things you can run yourself is a tax on not knowing your tools. ONCE looks clean.

This is awesome dude