Admin Manual

This manual covers everything needed to deploy and operate a Comaney instance. It assumes familiarity with Docker and basic Linux server administration.

In this manual

Section	What it covers
Deployment	Docker Compose setup, first-run, user and superuser creation
Environment Variables	Complete reference for all configuration variables
Email Configuration	SMTP setup, Mailpit for development
Cron Jobs	Required scheduled tasks and what they do
AI Providers	Choosing Claude, DeepSeek or a self-hosted model, their settings, community providers
Shared AI Access	Shared AI access, per-user limits, re-enabling
Registration & Users	Open vs. closed instances, user management
Console Commands	All management commands with usage reference

Quick-start checklist

1. Copy the minimal docker-compose.yml from Deployment.
2. Generate a DJANGO_SECRET_KEY (see Environment Variables).
3. Set DB_* variables to match your MariaDB service.
4. Either configure SMTP (EMAIL_HOST, EMAIL_PORT) or set DISABLE_EMAILING=TRUE.
5. Set SITE_URL and ALLOWED_HOSTS to your public domain.
6. Set ENABLE_REGISTRATION=TRUE for initial setup, then disable it after creating your account.
7. Configure the cron jobs on the host.
8. Create a superuser with docker exec.