Deployment

planesnitch ships as the Docker image psyb0t/planesnitch for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. It needs outbound HTTPS and nothing inbound.

Image tags

Tag	What it is
latest	The newest build of the main branch that passed lint and tests
sha-<commit>	The build of one main commit, by its full commit hash
vX.Y.Z	A release. Release tags reuse the image digest already built on main

Pin a vX.Y.Z tag if you want it to hold still, and read the changelog before moving.

Docker

docker run -d --name planesnitch \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -v ./config.yaml:/app/config.yaml:ro \
  -v ./csv:/csv:ro \
  -v ./images:/images \
  -e LOG_LEVEL=INFO \
  psyb0t/planesnitch

Mount	Needed	Holds
/app/config.yaml	yes	Your config. Read-only is fine; planesnitch only reads it
/csv	for icao_csv watchlists	The CSV watchlist files
/images	no	Cached aircraft-type photos. Without it they’re downloaded again after each restart

Port 8080 is the health endpoint. Publish it only if something outside the container polls it, and keep it on loopback: -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080.

Docker Compose

services:
  planesnitch:
    image: psyb0t/planesnitch:latest
    container_name: planesnitch
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./config.yaml:/app/config.yaml:ro
      - ./csv:/csv:ro
      - ./images:/images
    environment:
      LOG_LEVEL: INFO

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f planesnitch

State

planesnitch keeps almost nothing:

What	Where	Survives a restart
Config	Your mounted file	yes
CSV watchlists	Your mounted /csv	yes
Aircraft-type photo cache	/images	only if mounted
Alert cooldowns	Memory	no. Aircraft in range alert again after a restart
Source rate-limit pauses	Memory	no

There’s no database and nothing to back up beyond your config and CSVs.

Changing the config

Edit the mounted config.yaml; the next poll picks it up, no restart needed. With a single-file bind mount, some editors replace the file instead of rewriting it, and the container keeps seeing the old one. If an edit doesn’t show up in the logs as config reloaded (changed), mount the containing directory instead, or restart the container.

Upgrade

docker pull psyb0t/planesnitch:latest
docker rm -f planesnitch
# then run the same docker run command again

With Compose: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d.