Install it in about a minute.
Pick the way you like. All three end at the same place: one process listening on port 8420, with your data in a directory you chose.
Let your assistant install it with you.
Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or whatever you already have open. It reads the machine-readable docs and then walks you through it, asking about your setup before it hands you commands.
Works in any assistant that can open a URL. If yours cannot browse, paste the contents of llms.txt after the question. llms.txt
Read https://salt.md/llms.txt in full, then walk me through self-hosting Salt.md and connecting you to it over MCP. Ask me what operating system, hosting and domain I have before giving me any commands, and give me one step at a time. Flag the licence terms and the security pitfalls as we reach them rather than at the end.
Install options
Install
Run the one-liner, start the Docker container, or build from source.
Open the browser
Go to http://localhost:8420 and create your admin account. There is no setup wizard beyond that.
Make it reachable
Put it behind your reverse proxy, hand it TLS certificates, or let it open a Cloudflare tunnel.
Four environment variables.
The defaults are sensible; most instances never set anything but the data directory.
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
SALT_ADDR | :8420 | Listen address |
SALT_DATA | ./data | Data directory (SQLite file + uploads) |
SALT_TLS_CERT | — | TLS certificate file, serves HTTPS directly |
SALT_TLS_KEY | — | TLS key file, used with the certificate |
A backup is one command.
The snapshot is transactionally consistent, so you do not have to stop the instance to take one.
$ ./salt backup salt-backup.tar.gzSnapshot the database and uploaded files
$ ./salt restore salt-backup.tar.gzRestore into an empty data directory
Swap the binary, restart.
Re-run the installer or pull the new image, then restart the service. Open browser tabs detect the version change and reload themselves.
An upgrade replaces the binary only. State lives in the data directory, so nothing you wrote depends on the version you just deleted. Take a snapshot first anyway.
Prebuilt for the usual suspects.
Every release ships binaries with checksums. Current version: 1.5.2.
Linux
amd64 · arm64
Installer supported
macOS
amd64 · arm64
Installer supported
Windows
amd64
Binary in the release, install manually
Docker
amd64 · arm64
ghcr.io/salt-md/salt.md
One command. Then it is yours.
Install it, open the browser, create your admin account. If you do not like it, delete one directory and it is gone.
$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/salt-md/salt.md/main/install.sh | sh