Huly

Huly is a self‑hosted, full‑stack platform that bundles several productivity services—project management, chat, virtual office, documents, and inbox—into a single cohesive experience. From a developer standpoint it functions as both an application framework and a ready‑made SaaS stack that can be deployed on any Docker‑enabled host. The core idea is to expose a unified GraphQL API that powers the front end while delegating domain logic to micro‑services written in TypeScript/Node.js. The platform is intentionally modular; each service (e.g., CRM, HRM) lives in its own repository and plugs into the shared authentication and data layer.

Technical Stack

• Runtime: Node.js v20 (ES2022) with TypeScript for type safety and maintainability.
• Backend: A set of NestJS‑based micro‑services that communicate via gRPC or HTTP/REST, orchestrated by Docker Compose.
• Frontend: React 18 with Vite for fast dev builds, styled using Tailwind CSS and Radix UI primitives.
• Database: PostgreSQL 15 serves as the primary relational store; optional Redis for caching and message brokering.
• Search & Indexing: ElasticSearch is optional, used for full‑text search across tasks and documents.
• Auth: OAuth2/OIDC compliant with Keycloak or custom JWT providers, allowing SSO integration.
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions pipeline that builds Docker images, runs tests, and pushes to a registry.

Core Capabilities

• Typed API Client: The @huly/api-client package generates a fully typed client from the GraphQL schema, enabling zero‑config integration in TypeScript projects.
• Webhooks & Event Bus: Services emit events to a Kafka or RabbitMQ bus; external systems can subscribe via HTTP webhooks.
• Extensibility: Plugin architecture lets developers ship new modules that register routes, GraphQL resolvers, and UI components.
• Custom Workflows: The project management engine exposes a DSL for defining task states, transitions, and permissions.
• Real‑time Collaboration: WebSocket support (via Socket.IO) powers chat, live updates in virtual offices, and shared document editing.

Deployment & Infrastructure

Huly’s self‑hosting bundle (huly-selfhost) ships with a pre‑configured docker-compose.yml. The stack scales horizontally by replicating services behind a reverse proxy (NGINX/Traefik). For production, the recommended architecture includes:

• Database Replication: Master‑slave PostgreSQL with WAL shipping.
• Cache Layer: Redis cluster for session storage and rate limiting.
• Load Balancing: Traefik with automatic HTTPS via Let’s Encrypt.
• Observability: Prometheus + Grafana for metrics, Loki for logs, and OpenTelemetry for tracing.

Integration & Extensibility

• REST/GraphQL: All domain operations are exposed via GraphQL; legacy clients can fall back to REST endpoints.
• SDKs: Besides the TypeScript client, community SDKs for Python and Go are under development.
• CLI Tools: A command‑line interface (huly-cli) allows bulk data migration, schema introspection, and service health checks.
• Custom Themes: The UI is themeable via CSS variables; developers can ship brand‑specific themes as npm packages.

Developer Experience

The project follows a monorepo structure with pnpm workspaces, enabling fast dependency resolution and consistent versioning across packages. Documentation is hosted on the docs/ folder and automatically published to GitHub Pages; API schemas are available via GraphQL introspection. The community is active on Twitter and Discord, with issue templates that guide contributors through bug reports and feature requests. The huly-examples repo provides end‑to‑end demos that can be cloned and run with a single docker compose up.

Use Cases

• Internal SaaS: Companies can spin up a private, GDPR‑compliant project management system with built‑in chat and virtual office without licensing fees.
• Developer Toolchain: Integrate Huly’s API into CI/CD pipelines to auto‑create tasks from GitHub PRs or Slack messages.
• Custom CRM/HRM: Extend the core platform with domain‑specific modules, leveraging the existing auth and notification infrastructure.
• Event Management: Deploy virtual office spaces for remote conferences, complete with video rooms and shared whiteboards.

Advantages

• Unified Stack: One codebase powers multiple productivity services, reducing context switching for developers.
• Open Source Licensing: MIT license allows commercial use without per‑user fees, contrasting with proprietary alternatives like Linear or Jira.
• Performance: TypeScript + NestJS yields low latency, and the micro‑service architecture allows horizontal scaling of compute‑heavy modules.
• Flexibility: Plug‑and‑play plugins and a powerful workflow DSL let teams tailor the platform to niche processes.
• Community & Extensibility: Active contributors and clear contribution guidelines lower the barrier to adding new features or fixing bugs.

In short, Huly offers developers a modern, fully‑featured project management ecosystem that is easy to self‑host,