**Archipelago** is a bootable personal server OS. Flash it to a USB drive, install on any x86_64 or ARM64 machine, and manage Bitcoin infrastructure, self-hosted apps, mesh communication, and decentralized identity through a glassmorphism web UI.
Archipelago is being built as a **developer-ready app platform**, not a fixed appliance:
- **Manifest-driven apps.** Every app is declared in a single `manifest.yml` — image, ports, volumes, secrets, health checks, security policy. The orchestrator owns the entire lifecycle; there is no per-app installer code and no host-level provisioning.
- **Signed distribution.** App manifests ship inside an Ed25519-signed catalog verified against a pinned release-root key, not as loose files on disk. OTA release manifests are signed the same way.
- **Decentralized marketplace.** Third-party developers publish apps via Nostr-based discovery (NIP-78) with DID-signed manifests and federation-weighted trust scoring — no gatekept central store.
- **Rootless and secure by default.** Rootless Podman only. Read-only root, no-new-privileges, capability allow-list, secrets materialised 0600 and never logged. Never rootful, never a Docker socket mount.
- **100%-uptime-capable.** Every container is a systemd Quadlet unit under `user.slice` that survives backend restarts; a level-triggered reconciler self-heals drift every 30 seconds; migrations never destroy data.
- **Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots** full nodes with per-app version pinning and bulletproof version switching, automatic prune/full mode based on disk size
- **LND** and **Core Lightning** with channel management
Storage (FileBrowser, Immich, Nextcloud), Productivity (Vaultwarden), Media (Jellyfin, PhotoPrism, IndeeHub), Search (SearXNG), Network (NetBird, Tailscale), Home (Home Assistant), Nostr (nostr-rs-relay, strfry), Dev/Ops (Gitea, Grafana, Portainer, Uptime Kuma), and more — 27 curated in the store UI, 50+ packaged as manifests.
### Mesh Networking (tri-protocol)
- **Meshtastic**, **MeshCore**, and **Reticulum (RNS/LXMF)** LoRa transports behind one mesh chat UI
- End-to-end encryption with X3DH key agreement + double-ratchet
- RNode radio support with an OS-level `archy-rnodeconf` tool; interop verified against Sideband
- Image/voice attachments, mesh AI assistant (`!ai`), Bitcoin balance relay over mesh
- AppArmor profiles for container confinement; Tor hidden services for inter-node traffic
- Independent security audit of an early version archived in [`docs/archive/`](docs/archive/security-code-audit-2026-03.md); top findings since remediated
## Roadmap
**Done**
- Single-node production gate **green** — install / stop / start / restart / reinstall / reboot-survive / uninstall, 5 consecutive full runs with zero failures on real hardware
- Quadlet migration validated (all backends as `user.slice` services on the canary node)
- Release signing ceremony completed — release-root key pinned, catalog and OTA manifests signed
- Reticulum third mesh transport (real-RF LoRa gates passed), Bitcoin Core/Knots multi-version switching, decentralized marketplace backend, public demo
**In progress**
- Multinode pass: the same production gate across the whole test fleet ([`docs/multinode-testing-plan.md`](docs/multinode-testing-plan.md))
- 1.8.0 release hardening tail ([`docs/1.8.0-RELEASE-HARDENING-PLAN.md`](docs/1.8.0-RELEASE-HARDENING-PLAN.md)): OTA upgrade soak on real hardware, ISO/image hardening (per-device keys, no default creds, signed ISO)
**Planned**
- Developer CLI (`archy app validate/render/install/test`) to open third-party app publishing
- DHT/P2P distribution of releases and app images ([`docs/dht-distribution-design.md`](docs/dht-distribution-design.md))
- P2P encrypted voice/video over Tor, dual-ecash (Fedimint + Cashu) phases, paid streaming, hardware signer support
The live, priority-ordered task list is [`docs/UNIFIED-TASK-TRACKER.md`](docs/UNIFIED-TASK-TRACKER.md); the full narrative plan is [`docs/PRODUCTION-MASTER-PLAN.md`](docs/PRODUCTION-MASTER-PLAN.md).