Installation

Prerequisites

Before installing Synclet, make sure you have the following:

Requirement	Details
PostgreSQL 16	Used for all Synclet metadata, sync state, and configuration. Included in the Docker Compose setup.
Docker	Required to run Airbyte connectors. Docker Engine 20.10+ or Docker Desktop.
Helm 3 (optional)	Only needed if you plan to deploy Synclet on Kubernetes.

Docker Compose (Recommended)

The fastest way to get Synclet running. This setup includes PostgreSQL, Synclet, and automatic database migrations.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/synclet-io/synclet.git
cd synclet

# Start all services in the background
docker compose up -d

This starts:

• PostgreSQL 16 on port 5432 (mapped to host port 5437)
• Synclet on port 8080 (API + dashboard)
• Automatic database migrations on first startup (via the migrate service)

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080 to access the dashboard. You will be prompted to create your first admin account.

Pre-built Binary

Download a pre-compiled archive from the GitHub Releases page. Each release tag is named synclet-v<version> and publishes synclet-v<version>-<os>-<arch>.tar.gz archives for linux/amd64, linux/arm64, darwin/amd64 and darwin/arm64, plus SHA256SUMS over every archive.

1. Download, verify and extract the archive

# Download the archive for your platform and SHA256SUMS, e.g.
# synclet-v0.1.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing            # Linux
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing        # macOS
tar -xzf synclet-v0.1.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd synclet-v0.1.0-linux-amd64

2. Set required environment variables

# Only DB_DSN is strictly required for the binary to boot.
export DB_DSN="postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/synclet?sslmode=disable"

With ENVIRONMENT unset or development and outside a container, Synclet generates an ephemeral AUTH_JWT_SECRET and persists a SECRET_ENCRYPTION_KEY to <UserConfigDir>/synclet/encryption.key for a local trial. Anywhere else it refuses to start until both are set: generate each with openssl rand -base64 32, keep them in your secret manager and back up the encryption key.

See Environment Variables for every variable and its default.

3. Run database migrations

./synclet migrate up

4. Start the server

./synclet server

Synclet is now running on port 8080 by default.

Build from Source

If you prefer to compile Synclet yourself, you need Go 1.25+ installed.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/synclet-io/synclet.git
cd synclet

# Build the binary
go build -o bin/synclet .

# Or, if you have Task installed:
task build

The compiled binary is located at ./bin/synclet. Follow the same steps as the Pre-built Binary section to configure and run it.

Verifying Installation

Once Synclet is running, verify that everything is working:

1. Check the readiness endpoint

curl http://localhost:8081/ready

You should receive a 200 OK response. Health endpoints are served on the internal port (8081 by default), not on the UI port.

2. Open the dashboard

Navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your browser. The Synclet dashboard should load.

3. Create your first account

On the first visit, Synclet will prompt you to create an admin account. Enter your email and password to complete the setup.

Next Steps

• Configuration — Fine-tune Synclet with environment variables for SMTP, OIDC, sync behavior, and more.
• Quick Start — Create your first source, destination, and connection.