Quickstart

Want to see RedScribe running before committing to a real deployment? This gets you a working instance on your own machine in a few minutes: no TLS certificate, no domain, nothing to configure beyond three secrets.

1. Get the code and set up your environment file:

   git clone https://github.com/redscribe-labs/redscribe.git
   cd redscribe
   cp .env.example .env

2. Create the two secrets Django and Postgres need. These are file-based Docker secrets (see Environment variables), not .env values:

   python3 -c "import secrets, string; print(''.join(secrets.choice(string.ascii_letters + string.digits) for _ in range(50)))" > secrets/django_secret_key.txt
   openssl rand -base64 32 > secrets/postgres_password.txt
   touch secrets/root_key.txt  # filled in below, once the app is up

3. Build and start everything:

   docker compose up -d --build

4. Generate the instance’s encryption key, and restart to pick it up:

   docker compose exec web python manage.py generate_root_key

   Copy the value it prints into secrets/root_key.txt, then:

   docker compose up -d web

5. Open http://localhost:8000/setup/ and create your first account. Two factor authentication setup happens automatically on that first login.

That’s it, you’re in. Poke around, create a test engagement, generate a report.

The dashboard on a demo instance.

This setup isn't meant to stay this way

No TLS means no encryption in transit, which is fine for a machine only you can reach, but not for anything else. When you’re ready for a real deployment reachable by your team or over a network you don’t fully trust, see Installation for the options that add TLS properly, then continue through Requirements & sizing and Configuration.

Running into trouble? See Troubleshooting.