Kretase — open-source panel for self-hosting Minecraft/game servers
Been heads-down on a project called Kretase for the past few weeks, and it's finally at a point where it's worth sharing.
The short version: it's a panel you install on your own VPS or dedicated box to manage game servers — right now the focus is Minecraft, but the architecture isn't tied to it, so other games are on the roadmap. The whole thing started because I was messing around with older panels in this space and kept running into the same wall — PHP-based stacks that felt clunky to extend, install processes that involved five different guides, and UIs that looked like they hadn't been touched in years. So instead of patching around that, I just rewrote the concept from the ground up with a stack I actually enjoy working in: Node.js and TypeScript on the backend, React on the frontend, PostgreSQL with Prisma for the database layer.
On the architecture side, there's a clean split between the panel itself (the web UI + API) and a lightweight daemon called "wings" that runs on each machine hosting game servers. The panel talks to wings over WebSocket, wings talks to Docker directly, and the console output/stats stream back to the browser in real time through Socket.io. So if you're running multiple boxes, you add each one as a node and manage everything from a single dashboard.
Feature-wise, here's what's actually in there right now:
- A real web console — you see server output live and can send commands straight from the browser, no SSH needed for day-to-day stuff
- A file manager for editing configs, uploading/downloading files, without needing FTP
- Player and whitelist management baked into the UI
- Live CPU, RAM, and disk usage per server, updating continuously
- Multi-node support, so scaling across machines doesn't mean juggling separate panels
- A world manager that connects to CurseForge — you can browse and install premade maps directly, or back up and download your existing world with one click
- A plugin/mod manager, so installing a Paper/Spigot/Bukkit plugin or a Fabric mod doesn't mean manually dragging jar files around anymore
- Automated backups, two-factor auth on accounts, and a UI that supports multiple languages
- Role-based access if you want to give someone limited access to a specific server without making them a full admin
Setup is a single bash command that handles the whole panel install — nginx config, database setup, SSL via Let's Encrypt if you want it. There's a matching one-liner for the node agent too. And there's a separate update script that just pulls the latest code, rebuilds, and restarts everything without touching your existing data or config, so upgrades aren't a whole ordeal.
It's MIT licensed, completely free, no paid tiers or anything hidden — I just wanted to build something I'd actually want to run myself. It's still actively evolving, so if you spin it up and hit a bug, or think something obvious is missing, I'd genuinely appreciate hearing about it. Happy to dig into any of the architecture decisions too if anyone's curious.