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PortBay

Your dev environment just got a co-worker

PortBay is the macOS dev environment with a task board you share with your AI agents. Assign a card, move it to Todo, and PortBay dispatches Claude Code, Codex or Cursor to build it in a real running environment — then moves the card to Done and comments what it did. Local, private, free.

Free & open source · Works with Claude Code, Codex & Cursor · Your Mac, nothing in the cloud

Mission control

Where your agents come to work

PortBay is the operating hub between you and your AI agents — they pick up cards, build against real local sites, and report back. All on your Mac.

2 agents working right now
Agent team6 agents
Claude Code
Stripe webhooks
Working
Codex
Auth test suite
In review
Cursor
Pricing page
Working
Gemini
Schema migration
Queued
Copilot
Release notes
Idle
ChatGPT
Docs pass
Offline

Every agent on one roster

Claude Code, Codex and Cursor show up like teammates — who's working, on what, right now.

BoardCard moved to Todo
2m ago
AssigneeDispatched to @claude
now
Claude assigned
AgentTests green — card moved to Done
6m ago

Assign a card. It gets built.

Move a card to Todo and PortBay dispatches the agent — no prompt-pasting, no terminal juggling.

blog.test is liveCaddy, PHP 8.3 and a trusted HTTPS certificate — nothing to configure
Live
0Config files
1Click to live
100%Local & private

Press play. Your site is live.

Runtime, web server, trusted HTTPS and a real .test domain — handled in one click.

GET /api/cart 200 12 ms · blog.test
POST /checkout/session 201 48 ms · stripe-cli
mysql SELECT * FROM orders 3.1 ms
GET /assets/app.css 304 2 ms
mail order-confirmation caught → Mailpit
PATCH /api/cards/42 200 19 ms · @claude
queue ProcessWebhook done · 0 retries
GET /api/board 200 8 ms · portbay
https cert renewed mkcert · trusted
POST /webhooks/stripe 200 31 ms
mysql UPDATE cards SET status 1.8 ms
GET /pricing 200 11 ms · chrome
GET /api/cart 200 12 ms · blog.test
POST /checkout/session 201 48 ms · stripe-cli
mysql SELECT * FROM orders 3.1 ms
GET /assets/app.css 304 2 ms
mail order-confirmation caught → Mailpit
PATCH /api/cards/42 200 19 ms · @claude
queue ProcessWebhook done · 0 retries
GET /api/board 200 8 ms · portbay
https cert renewed mkcert · trusted
POST /webhooks/stripe 200 31 ms
mysql UPDATE cards SET status 1.8 ms
GET /pricing 200 11 ms · chrome
Requests2.4k
Avg response14 ms
DB queries184
HTTPS100%
Mail caught36
Errors0
Cache hits92%
Uptime99.9%
Open the inspector
All services running smoothly

Watch every request as it happens

HTTP traffic, database queries and outgoing mail — captured live, and nothing leaves your Mac.

Today’s board
In progress
Wire Stripe webhooks
Verify signatures and replay failed events.
83/5
Review
Fix flaky auth spec
Stabilise the session-expiry test on CI.
55/5
Low
Dark-mode audit
Sweep contrast across the settings panes.
21/4
In progress
Migrate to Postgres
Port the schema and swap the .env wiring.
83/5
Review
Polish empty states
First-run screens for board and services.
45/5
Done
Ship pricing page
Paddle checkout wired and deployed to main.
85/5

A board you share with your agents

Agents claim cards, move them to Done and comment what changed. You stay in control.

No Docker. No config.

Local sites that just work

Designed to the last detail and engineered for speed — every project starts in seconds, on a real domain, with HTTPS.

~

Press play and your site is live at https://yourapp.test — HTTPS and all.

LaravelWordPressNext.jsViteNodeStaticFlutterExpo

Run any PHP, Node or static project without touching a config file.

.env · injected ✓
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_DATABASE=blog
DB_USERNAME=blog

Spin up a MySQL or Postgres database per project, wired in automatically.

Import sites…⌘K
  • Import from Laravel Herd
  • Import from ServBay
  • Import from MAMP

Import every site from Herd, ServBay or MAMP in one click.

One-click launch

Press play. Your site is running.

PortBay manages the runtime, the web server, the certificate, and a real local domain for you. Hit play and your project is live at https://yourapp.test — nothing to configure.

Real local domains. Every project gets a .test hostname — no /etc/hosts editing.
Automatic HTTPS. Trusted mkcert certificates, issued and renewed for you.
Managed runtimes. PHP, Node and more, downloaded and pinned per project.
Zero config. No Dockerfiles, no nginx.conf, no Homebrew version juggling.
Instant start / stop. Toggle projects from one window or the macOS menu bar.
Isolated per project. Pinned versions and env vars that never leak between apps.

In the app

Add a folder, hit play. Every project in one window with live status, ports and logs.

Or in your terminal

Prefer the keyboard? `portbay add` and `portbay start` script everything the app does.

Batteries included

Databases and email, built in.

Stop installing services by hand. PortBay provisions a database per project and captures outgoing mail, then injects the connection details into your app's environment automatically.

Per-project databases. Create a MySQL or PostgreSQL database in one click.
Auto-wired credentials. Connection strings land in your .env — no copy-paste.
Backups & restore. Snapshot a database and roll back, with retention controls.
Mailpit built in. Catch every outgoing email in a local inbox — nothing escapes.
Schema tools. Inspect and manage your database without a separate client.
Clean teardown. Remove a project and its services go with it.

One environment, two cursors

terminal
agent@shop: ~ portbay start
agent@shop: ~
shop.test
AGENT
YOU

You and the agent share the same machine

Agents don't build against an empty checkout in someone else's cloud — they work in the same local environment you do. The agent drives the terminal while you watch the site update at https://shop.test, with your real services, data and HTTPS.

Linux (Ubuntu)

The board, the agents and one-click environments on Linux. On the roadmap.

Coming soon

macOS

Native app for Apple Silicon. Signed, notarized and running entirely on your Mac — macOS 11 or later.

Get started

Windows

The same workflow on Windows — local sites, services and the agent board. On the roadmap.

Coming soon

Trust Through Transparency.Open Codebase. Your Mac. Verifiable Builds.

Read the Code

Open-Source Transparency

Verify every line of code. No black boxes. No hidden logic.

Your Mac Is the Compute

Sites, databases and agents run on your machine. PortBay is the control plane — no shared compute, no cloud account, nothing leaves your Mac.

Verifiable Releases

Every release is signed, notarized and stapled by CI, ships an SBOM, and updates are verified against a published public key before installing.

Pricing

Free until you outgrow six projects

The Community plan is the full everyday product — the agent task board, HTTPS, databases, mail capture and tunnels. Pro removes the ceilings, not the features.

Community

$0

The full everyday product, open source, for up to 6 projects.

  • Up to 6 projects — 3 without an account
  • The shared agent task board — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor & Antigravity
  • PHP, Node, static & mobile stacks with trusted HTTPS on .test domains
  • Per-project MySQL & PostgreSQL databases
  • Mailpit email capture
  • Public Cloudflare tunnels & SSH tunnels
  • 2 sandboxed runs, 10 MB task attachments
  • One-click import from Laravel Herd, ServBay & MAMP
  • Open source (AGPL-3.0)

Fully functional forever. Not a trial.

Pro

$10/month

The Community plan with every ceiling removed.

  • Everything in Community
  • Unlimited projects & unlimited sandboxed runs
  • 250 MB task attachments — 25× the free limit
  • Your own domain suffix & a stable custom-tunnel hostname
  • SSH tunnels that hold: keep-alive, auto-reconnect, reverse, SOCKS proxy & multi-hop
  • Per-project CORS policies
  • End-to-end encrypted sync across 2 Macs
  • Early access & priority support

Upgrade from PortBay → Settings → Account. Paddle handles checkout.

Billing, cancellation and refunds — full pricing details

Trusted by experts.
Used by the leaders.

Agents can now use the same tools as humans.Everything PortBay provides natively, now in every agent's toolkit.

A real running environment

Agents don't get an empty checkout. They build against your running database, your .test domain and HTTPS — the same environment you press Play on.

Runtimes pinned per project

PHP and Node, downloaded and pinned by PortBay — the agent runs the exact versions your app ships with.

Databases, auto-wired

A MySQL or PostgreSQL database per project, credentials already in .env. Agents migrate and seed real data.

HTTPS the browser trusts

Every project serves at https://yourapp.test with a trusted mkcert certificate — agents test what your users will see.

Dispatched from the board

Type @claude on a card. The agent claims it, works in this environment, and moves the card to Done.

Questions

PortBay, in plain terms

What is PortBay?

PortBay is a free, open-source macOS dev environment with a task board you share with your AI coding agents. It runs your PHP, Node, database and static projects on real .test domains with automatic HTTPS in one click — no Docker, no config — and its Kanban board can dispatch agents like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor to work your tasks in that running environment.

Can PortBay run my AI coding agents?

Yes. PortBay's task board doubles as a control hub for AI coding agents. You assign a card to an agent and move it to Todo; PortBay dispatches Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor or Antigravity to work it, the agent claims the card (In Progress), does the work in your running project, comments what it changed, and the card advances to Done — all on your Mac.

Which AI coding agents does PortBay work with?

PortBay detects and dispatches the agents you already have installed: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor and Antigravity. You can run them in CLI (headless) mode or open them in the desktop app, and dispatch one from a card by moving it to Todo or by @mentioning the agent in a comment.

How is PortBay's agent task board different from Vibe Kanban, Conductor or Cline?

Those tools orchestrate coding agents across parallel git worktrees. PortBay does the dispatch-and-track loop too, but the card runs inside a full local dev environment — managed PHP and Node runtimes, a per-project database, trusted HTTPS on a real .test domain, email capture and a public tunnel — so the agent builds against a running app, not an empty checkout. PortBay is also your everyday local dev tool, open source, and runs fully local on your Mac.

Does PortBay's task board stay local and private?

Yes. The board, your cards and the agent's comments all live on your Mac — nothing is sent to a server and there is no account required to use it. It is a single, private source of truth between you and your agents, not a cloud service.

Is PortBay free?

Yes. PortBay is free and open source, and runs up to 6 projects. A Pro plan ($10/month) removes the project limit and adds 250 MB task attachments, custom domains and tunnels, hardened SSH tunnels and encrypted sync across two Macs.

How is PortBay different from Laravel Herd, MAMP or ServBay?

Unlike PHP-only tools, PortBay runs PHP, Node, databases and public tunnels in one app, gives every project automatic HTTPS on a real local domain, and imports your existing sites from Laravel Herd, ServBay or MAMP in one click. The app is open source.

Does PortBay use Docker?

No. PortBay runs native managed runtimes — PHP-FPM, Node and more — directly on macOS, so projects start in seconds without containers, images or YAML files.

What can PortBay run?

PHP apps including Laravel and WordPress, Node frameworks like Next.js and Vite, plain static sites, and mobile targets including Flutter, Expo, iOS and Android — each detected and run the right way automatically.

Does PortBay give my local sites HTTPS?

Yes. Every project gets a real .test domain and a trusted mkcert HTTPS certificate that PortBay issues and renews for you, so your browser treats local sites as secure with no warnings.

Can I share a local site publicly?

Yes. PortBay opens a secure Cloudflare tunnel that gives your local site a public HTTPS URL in one click — useful for client demos, webhooks and testing on real devices.

Does PortBay work on Apple Silicon?

Yes. PortBay is a native macOS app built for Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) on macOS 11 or later. An Intel build is coming soon; Windows and Linux are on the roadmap.

PortBay mascot — a friendly blue tugboat

Run your first local site in one click.

Download for macOS

Free & open source · macOS 11+ on Apple Silicon · Pro from $10/mo