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gugu’s client and community backend are both open source. The backend runs on your own Supabase project, so accounts, messages, and files are stored in your project. The Supabase Free plan is enough for a small team. This page covers what to prepare and the overall steps. Step-by-step commands and troubleshooting are in the English guides in the open-source repository:

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What the community edition includes

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What to prepare

  1. A Supabase account, with a new empty project for gugu. Do not share it with other data.
  2. A Supabase personal access token. Generate it on the Access Tokens page and limit its scope to this project. Keep the token on your own computer. Do not commit it to a code repository.
  3. An SMTP email service, such as Resend, Brevo, or AWS SES. gugu signs in with a 6-digit verification code sent by email. Supabase’s built-in email sends only 2 emails per hour, and only to organization members, so you must use your own SMTP. The code itself comes from the email template, which pnpm run setup updates. Free projects cannot edit templates while they use the built-in email, so set up SMTP first.
  4. Git, Node 24, and pnpm 10.28.2 on your computer. On a Mac you also need the Xcode Command Line Tools.

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Overall steps

  1. In the Supabase dashboard, go to Authentication → Emails → SMTP Settings, turn on custom SMTP, and enter the address and account from your email service. Raise the hourly sending limit as needed.
  2. Download OpenDCAI/gugu-supabase and OpenDCAI/gugu. In the backend repository, run pnpm run setup --client-dir ../gugu. It sets up the database, Edge Functions, storage, and real-time updates, and writes the connection details into the client directory. Note that the command is pnpm run setup. pnpm setup is a different, built-in pnpm command.
  3. In the client repository, run pnpm install --frozen-lockfile, then pnpm rebuild:native, then start the app with GUGU_DB_TARGET=local bash scripts/dev-app.sh.
  4. Enter your email and the 6-digit verification code you receive. Click New Task, choose an installed Agent, and start working.
To check the result: sign in with a second account, add each other as friends, create a group, and send a message and a file. If the other side sees them without refreshing, real-time updates and attachments both work.

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Free plan limits

  • A project unused for a week is paused. Restore it in the Supabase dashboard.
  • 500 MB database, 1 GB file storage, 25 MB maximum per attachment.
  • At most 200 concurrent real-time connections.
The Supabase pricing page has the authoritative numbers.

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FAQ

The email has only a link, no verification code. You have not set up your own SMTP yet, or you set it up but did not rerun pnpm run setup. Sign-in says too many requests. Built-in email sends only 2 emails per hour, and the same email address can request a code only once every 60 seconds. Set up SMTP and raise the limit. Starting the client reports that pty.node does not exist. You installed dependencies but have not run pnpm rebuild:native. For more cases, see Free plan limits and troubleshooting.