Pssst! The next version of Astral is nearly ready — go poke at it

[syropian]

If you're reading this, you're either an Astral user, an Astral lurker, or lost. All three are welcome.

A status update for the people who hang around here: the next version of Astral is effectively feature-complete. It's not on the public server yet — that relaunch is its own thing for a later date — but it runs on your own machine or your own box today, and I'd love for a few of you to take it for a spin before it goes wide.

The short version of what's new

Under the hood this version is a full rewrite — rebuilt on Laravel 13, Hybridly, Vue 3, and Tailwind 4, with a new design to match. Same idea as always: turn your unsearchable pile of GitHub stars into an organized, annotated, searchable library. I won't dwell on the plumbing; here's the stuff you'll actually notice.

• Galileo search got a real query language. Filtering is now built on typed tokens — tag:cli, lang:rust, topic:parser, is:untagged — with autocomplete as you type, and the whole query lives in the URL, so any view is bookmarkable. GitHub topics now show up as clickable chips too, right alongside language and tag filters.
• Your data is yours, portably. Export everything — tags, notes, metadata, smart filters — to a plain JSON file for backups, analysis, or moving between instances. Import reads it straight back.
• One-click migration from old Astral. Coming from the legacy app? There's a resumable, idempotent importer that brings your tags, notes, smart filters, and star links across. Run it twice, nothing breaks.
• A browser extension is nearly here. "Astral for GitHub" puts a Tags button right on repo pages, so you can tag things without leaving GitHub — and it talks to your instance over a token-authed API. The API ships in this release; the extension itself is in the final stretch and landing soon. Consider this the teaser.

Plus the usual quality-of-life haul: a proper light/dark/system theme, keyboard shortcuts for the things you do constantly, and faster, resumable star loading. And it's all open source now under AGPL-3.0.

The full rundown lives in the README on the next branch: https://github.com/astralapp/astral/tree/next

Running it locally (the featherweight way)

The lightest setup uses SQLite — no database container, just the app. You'll need Docker and make.

git clone https://github.com/astralapp/astral.git
cd astral
make setup-sqlite

That creates your .env, builds the images, and boots the stack. The app key and migrations run themselves on first boot, so there's nothing to babysit — the app comes up at http://localhost:8080.

One required step before you can actually sign in: Astral authenticates through GitHub, so you need a GitHub OAuth app.

1. GitHub → Settings → Developer settings → OAuth Apps → New OAuth App
2. Homepage URL: http://localhost:8080
3. Authorization callback URL: http://localhost:8080/auth/github/callback
4. Drop the credentials into .env:

GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=your-client-id
GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=your-client-secret
GITHUB_CLIENT_CALLBACK_URL=http://localhost:8080/auth/github/callback

Then restart so it picks them up:

make restart-sqlite

make logs-sqlite follows startup and make help lists everything else. Prefer MySQL, or want to self-host on an actual server? The README covers make setup and the production stack.

What I'm after

This is a "try it and tell me what breaks" moment, not a launch. If something's confusing, broken, or missing, this thread — or an issue on the repo — is exactly where to say so. Migration feedback is especially handy if you're bringing a big library across.

Public server relaunch comes later. For now: go forth and organize.

[zacgoodwin]

Once I get my homelab back up I'll give this a spin!

[vesper8]

I have it up and running... I'm using it with a mysql db.. and I am serving it with Laravel Valet.. I did not want to use Docker for this.

So far it works great, I was even able to import my tags from the previous Astral I had set up years ago.

[syropian]

That's great news! I'll be sure to add proper instructions to get running with Valet soon 👍🏻

Anything tricky you ran in to or was it pretty straightforward?