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The Nod wordmark inside the boxd card. Nod is n8n’s open-source personal agent with its own computer. It works across your email, calendar, apps, and the web, and asks before it acts for you. You can run it as a desktop app, or host one server and reach the same assistant from the web, the desktop app, Telegram, and WhatsApp. A Nod server is a Docker Compose stack that includes the server, PostgreSQL, a workspace container, and a browser container. A boxd machine has Docker and Compose installed and its own HTTPS address, so the server needs no domain, no certificate, and no firewall rules. Nod’s docs have a community guide for this, Deploy on boxd, added in this pull request. This page is the short version.

Set up

1

Create a machine

On your computer, with the boxd CLI installed and signed in. Pick your own machine name and use it in place of nod below:
This creates a machine with 2 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory, the size Nod’s docs start with. The command prints the machine’s address as url: nod.boxd.sh, or nod.nyc.boxd.sh in New York. boxd machine get nod shows it again.
2

Get Nod

Open a shell on the machine with boxd connect nod, then clone Nod and generate its configuration:
setup.sh writes a private .env with a server token, an encryption key, and a database password.
3

Set the address

In .env, edit these three lines. Use the exact url from the first step as the address, such as https://nod.nyc.boxd.sh in New York:
.env
4

Build and start

The first build compiles Nod and its browser tools. It took about 7 minutes in our test on this machine size. The command returns when every container is healthy.
5

Sign in

Print the server token:
Open the machine’s address, enter the token, and finish onboarding to connect a model. The desktop app connects to the same address with Connect to a server.

Check it from a terminal

With your machine’s address, the page answers without a token, and the API doesn’t:

What the settings do

boxd terminates TLS, so leave Nod’s own https profile off. The address is public, and Nod’s server token is what protects it. Keep the token private. PostgreSQL, the browser, and the workspace are not published outside the machine.

Clients that aren’t a browser

The desktop app, Telegram webhooks, and Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API call the machine’s address directly. Bot protection in the On mode asks every visitor for a browser check, which those clients can’t pass. Check the machine’s mode, and set it to Sleep only if it is On:
This machine never sleeps, so in Sleep only every request goes straight to Nod.

Running it

  • Restarts: the containers start again by themselves when the machine reboots, and conversations, files, and schedules are on the machine’s disk.
  • Cost: the machine runs all day. See boxd.sh/pricing for the rates, and the cost section of Nod’s guide for an estimate.
  • Backups: follow Nod’s backup procedure and keep a copy outside the machine.
  • Size: browser tasks and local models can need more than 2 vCPUs. See machine sizes.

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