NetRatel

Warning

🟠 Early development: NetRatel is under active development. Features and installation behavior may change, and prerelease builds can contain defects. Evaluate RC.17 on disposable systems before using it on managed machines.

NetRatel is a self-hosted application for managing computers and automating work across them. Connect machines, view their status, run scripts and jobs, open remote terminals, browse files, and inspect logs from one web interface.

Built with .NET and Akka.NET for real-time coordination, NetRatel includes an API, command-line tools, a native Client/agent, and optional Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. AI services are optional and are not required for normal operation.

Prerelease candidates are evaluation builds. Do not use them as a stable channel or for unattended fleet updates. The product version is set in Directory.Build.props.

Components

• Web provides the browser interface and authenticated operator sessions.
• API owns durable PostgreSQL state, authorization, and the agent gateway.
• CLI, stdio MCP, and HTTP MCP provide separately authorized automation interfaces.
• Client is the native agent installed on managed machines.
• RatelDesk connector provides tenant-scoped protected configuration and preview for monitoring flows; see Monitoring flows.

Self-hosting

The documented deployment supports PostgreSQL for durable multi-instance application data and a single-node SQLite profile for smaller local installs. Persist Data Protection and agent-signing material outside the container filesystem. A fresh local installation can use its built-in local accounts with no external identity provider; configure OIDC only for an optional OIDC or hybrid deployment. Supply all secrets at deployment time; the tracked configuration contains only reserved example values.

Read self-hosting before deployment. Obtain the public release bundle only from the matching prerelease and verify its checksums; the bundle supplies immutable image digests only after promotion has completed. See supported platforms for the rc.3 release matrix and its explicit non-goals.

Useful references: architecture, configuration, CLI and MCP, Native Client, Services inventory, Monitoring, Monitoring flows, development and testing, troubleshooting, and release engineering. The generated API reference is available at /api/docs/ on a running deployment.

Development

The repository pins its SDK in global.json. Restore, build, and test with:

dotnet restore NetRatel.sln
dotnet build NetRatel.sln --configuration Release --no-restore
bash tools/ci/run-fast-regressions.sh TestResults/fast

tools/ci/verify-product-version.sh verifies that all first-party projects evaluate to the release-manifest version.

Required CI runs fast unit, component and focused API/PostgreSQL regressions after one restore/build. Full product-pair checks, physical incidents, native client execution, browser acceptance and deployment/upgrade checks are opt-in through the manual integration workflow. See release validation for selecting one functional suite and interpreting pending owner acceptance.

Contributing and security

See CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, and SECURITY.md. NetRatel is licensed under Apache-2.0; see LICENSE and NOTICE.