Introduction

pika is a self-hosted server that combines three things into a single binary:

1. A configuration store — versioned JSON / YAML / TOML configs with per-environment variants and rich inheritance from external sources.
2. A secrets manager — opt-in at-rest encryption with key rotation, plus inheritance integrations for pulling values from Vault, Kubernetes, cloud secret managers, and more.
3. A personal vault — end-to-end encrypted password and TOTP vault per user, with recovery kits and session locking.

Everything is administered through a built-in web UI; consumers fetch resolved data over a small, well-defined HTTP API.

Why pika?

• One binary. No external database, no companion process — pika ships with an embedded bw (BadgerDB) store. Mount a single volume, point it at a port, done.
• Edit-aware. Every save is versioned. You can roll back, diff, or pin a consumer to a specific version using either an integer or a semver constraint.
• Inheritance instead of templating. Compose a final config out of pieces sourced from Vault, Kubernetes, Consul, etcd, AWS Secrets Manager / SSM, GCP Secret / Parameter Manager, Azure Key Vault, plain HTTP, or other pika files — without macros or templating languages.
• Hot reload. Authentication strategies, hooks, endpoints, and external sources are managed at runtime from the UI. No restart needed.
• Cluster-ready. Run a 3+ node HA cluster with QUIC-based peer discovery, leader-elected writes, and replicated reads.

Try it in 30 seconds

docker run -d --name pika -v pika:/data -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/rakunlabs/pika:latest

Open https://localhost:8080, accept the first-start self-signed certificate, create the initial admin account, and you have a working server.

To consume a config, create a file in the UI, then mint an API token under Settings → Tokens and read it:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer pika_..." https://localhost:8080/data/myapp/config

Where to go next

• Installation — Docker, Kubernetes, or a static binary.
• Configuration — environment variables and the YAML config file.
• Concepts — folders, configs, versions, variants, and inheritance.
• Consuming data — the /data/* endpoint, authentication, and query parameters.
• Admin API — the full REST surface for management operations.

Project status

Pika is actively developed at rakunlabs/pika. Issues and pull requests are welcome.