Panelica Docker Templates are now open source — contribute an app with a single JSON file

[admin]

Docker Templates are now open source​

Our catalog of Docker app templates for Panelica's Docker Manager is now public on GitHub, MIT licensed, and open for contributions:

https://github.com/Panelica/docker-templates

What this actually means​

Every app you see in Docker Manager -> App Store is defined by a single JSON file. n8n, WordPress, Chatwoot, Portainer, OpenVPN — all of it comes from these template files. Up until now that catalog lived only inside our internal build. Now it's a public repo, and anyone can propose a new app template. Once a template is merged, it ships to every Panelica server in the next panel update — and it carries your name with it, via the contributed_by field.

Contributing takes about 10 minutes​

1. Fork the repo
2. Add templates/<slug>.json — copy one of the three examples in the repo as a starting point:
   • n8n.json — a single-container app
   • wordpress.json — app + database
   • chatwoot.json — a full 4-container stack
3. Run the validator locally:
   

   python3 scripts/validate.py

4. Open a pull request

CI runs on every PR — schema validation, a security lint pass, and an image-existence check. If it's green and passes review, it's in.

Why you can trust what gets merged​

No community contribution reaches a live server directly. Everything goes through CI, human review, and our signed panel release pipeline before it's distributed. The template schema itself enforces a baseline:

• privileged mode is not allowed
• host mounts are not allowed
• data services (databases, caches, etc.) bind to localhost only, never exposed publicly by default
• secrets are generated automatically — no hardcoded credentials in templates
• images must come from trusted registries

Multi-container apps aren't as scary as they look​

Take a look at chatwoot.json in the repo — it wires up Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Sidekiq as four containers using a linked_services array. If you've ever written a docker-compose file, you already know how to write one of these.

Roadmap​

The full catalog — 100+ templates already live in the panel today — will be migrated into the repo gradually. If there's an app you want to see, or a template capability that's missing, open an issue and let us know.

What do you want to see in the App Store?​

Open an issue, or better — send us your first pull request. Early contributors' names will show up right there in the panel.