i built an open-source Minecraft server dashboard with AI agents in 5 days. now looking for the first 20 servers
hey IH,
i just shipped v0.4.2 of Playkeeper, a free, open-source dashboard that turns a vps you rent into a Minecraft server host for you and your friends. one command installs it, and everything else happens in the browser. today's release adds a web file browser and runs on Ubuntu, Debian, the RHEL family, Amazon Linux and ARM servers.
why
i host servers for friends, and it keeps turning into a second job: whitelisting people over ssh, restarting after crashes, remembering backups. free hosts have queues and servers that go to sleep, and the big panels are made for hosting companies.
the business side
it's AGPL and every feature stays free. later there'll be optional paid off-site backup storage, and maybe hosting run by a partner company. revenue today: $0. servers running today: a handful.
distribution this week
r/selfhosted's new project thread, a Show HN on wednesday, comparison pages for people leaving Aternos, a few directories, and a small Meta ad test.
where i'd love your input
- if you've made money from an open-source tool with a paid add-on, what worked?
- would you pay a few dollars a month for off-site backups of something you self-host?
demo, no signup: https://playkeeper.io/demo/
code: https://github.com/CIYAhq/playkeeper
Five days to a usable dashboard is fast. For the first 20 servers, I would ask each owner for one paid or clear outcome they want weekly, then shape the agent around that instead of a full feature list. Off-site backups sound like a clean boundary because the input is server data and the output is a tested restore. Which recurring task do those early servers ask you to handle most?
Among the servers already running Playkeeper, are owners asking for off-site backups themselves, or is paid backup mainly a monetization hypothesis you're testing now?
it's a hypothesis right now. it's day 2 and there are only a handful of servers, so nobody has asked for anything yet.
off-site backups are already in the free version (encrypted copies to your own S3 or SFTP), because losing a world your friends spent months building is the one thing people never forgive lol. the paid part would just be storage i run, so you don't have to set up a bucket yourself.
That’s actually a useful early distinction. Could be interesting to compare notes on the paid backup hypothesis by email sometime, if you’re open to it.
Nice project. For the first 20, a short "request early help" form on the site (server size, current host, what's annoying about it) lets you pick the most engaged admins and gives you your Aternos comparison-page copy for free. chatform.in (I work on it) does this conversationally with a free tier, if you want something friendlier than a plain form.