Podbay Self-Hosted is currently designed for one trusted operator on a local machine or private network. It is not a hardened multi-user hosting platform.

• There is one built-in owner login. It protects the dashboard and browser terminal, but it is not a multi-user authorization system. On a remotely reachable fresh install, pre-seed a strong PODBAY_AUTH_PASSWORD so an unexpected first visitor cannot claim the owner account.
• The control plane can control Docker. The web and serve services mount the Docker socket so they can create and manage pods. Docker-socket access is effectively host-administrator access.
• Pod ports are dynamically published. The dashboard, pod previews, and pod-agent ports may be reachable beyond localhost. On Linux, Docker-published ports can bypass ordinary UFW or firewalld rules; restrict the Docker bindings or use verified DOCKER-USER/nftables filtering.
• Pods share a Docker host. Containers separate files and processes, but this alpha is not designed to isolate mutually untrusted users on one machine.
• Agents can run commands and access the network. Review instructions, skills, repositories, and secrets before making them available to an agent.

Prefer localhost or a private VPN/tailnet. If you expose the alpha through a public reverse proxy, use HTTPS, keep the owner login enabled, restrict Docker-published ports with Docker-aware filtering, and keep Docker and the host operating system patched.

Per-pod app secrets are encrypted at rest. The encryption key and the owner-session signing secret are stored in the podbay_appdata Docker volume, while encrypted records and the owner credential live in Postgres. Back up both together.

Claude authentication is performed against your Claude account. Agents and tools can also contact third-party services required by your project. Network traffic originates from your Docker host.

Deleting a pod removes its container and workspace. Treat Git or another export as the durable copy of important project work.

The installer currently pulls public images from GitHub Container Registry. Pin image digests when you need repeatable deployments. A buildable source release and its license are being prepared; the public installer should not yet be treated as a reproducible source distribution.

Do not include exploit details, credentials, tokens, or private data in a public issue. Send sensitive security reports to security@podbay.cloud. Use GitHub Issues for non-sensitive installation bugs.