Gantry
Gantry is an open-source internal developer platform (IDP) that ships as a single Go binary with zero external dependencies. It gives engineering teams a unified service catalog, self-service actions, GitOps-native configuration, and a plugin ecosystem — without the operational complexity of alternatives like Backstage.
What Gantry Does
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Gantry IDP │
│ │
│ Service Catalog │ Actions │ Plugins │ Search │
│─────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│ Single Go Binary │
│ Embedded SQLite · JWT Auth │
│ Kubernetes · GitHub · ArgoCD · More │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
- Service Catalog — A single source of truth for every service, API, team, infrastructure component, and environment in your org. Entities are typed, validated, and searchable.
- Self-Service Actions — Define runbooks and workflows as executable actions with schema-driven forms. Developers can trigger deployments, provision environments, or run scripts without opening a ticket.
- Plugin Ecosystem — Connect Kubernetes clusters, GitHub repositories, ArgoCD applications, and more. Plugins sync entities automatically and add live context (pod logs, PRs, sync status) into the catalog.
- GitOps Native — Manage your catalog with YAML files and
gantry apply. Your catalog becomes a Git-versioned artifact you can review, diff, and roll back. - Full-Text Search — Find any entity in milliseconds via SQLite FTS5. No Elasticsearch required.
Why Not Backstage?
Backstage is powerful, but operating it is a full-time job:
| Gantry | Backstage | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | ~5 minutes | Hours to days |
| Runtime dependencies | None — single binary | Node.js, PostgreSQL, often Kubernetes |
| Hosting | Any server or Docker | Kubernetes recommended |
| Embedded database | SQLite, zero config | External DB required |
| GitOps apply | gantry apply built-in | YAML ingestion via plugins |
Gantry is built for teams that want the benefits of an IDP without dedicated platform engineering headcount to maintain it.
Quick Start
# Install and start the Gantry service (Linux/macOS)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/go2engle/gantry/main/install.sh | sh
# Or with Docker
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/go2engle/gantry:latest
Open http://localhost:8080. Default credentials: admin / the password you set during install, or changeme if you skipped it.
See the Installation guide for more options.
Key Concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Entity | The core unit — a typed YAML object with kind, metadata, and spec |
| Kind | The type of entity: Service, API, Team, Environment, Infrastructure, Action, Documentation |
| Action | An executable workflow with schema-driven inputs |
| Plugin | A first-party or community extension that connects external systems |
Project Status
Gantry is actively developed and approaching its first stable release. The core API (entities, actions, auth, plugins) is stable. GitOps reconciliation (push/pull paths, GitHub webhooks) is in progress.
- Apache 2.0 licensed
- Contributions welcome — see Contributing
- Issues and feature requests: github.com/go2engle/gantry/issues