People write when something breaks. Nothing should slip through.

For your customers

The single biggest reason people give up on a support portal is being asked to make an account. So Docket does not ask.

• No account, no password

  They send a request with a name and an email, and get a private link back to read replies, add files, or say it is sorted.

• Formatted replies and files

  JPG, PNG, PDF, ZIP and TXT up to 10 MB, five per request — from both sides of the conversation.

• Their own history

  Everything they have ever asked, reachable from the same emailed link. Nothing to remember, nothing to sign into.

For your team

One queue, and the tools to actually work it.

• A queue you can work

  Search, filter, sort and act in bulk. Stages, priorities, categories and tags are all named by you, and apply straight away with no rebuild.

• Private notes

  Sit in the conversation, clearly marked, and never reach the customer. Saved replies cover the answers you send twenty times a week.

• Reply targets that are fair

  Set them per priority. The clock pauses while you are waiting on the customer, so their delay is not counted against you.

• Reports and an audit trail

  Who answered what, how long it took, what people ask about most — with a spreadsheet download, an admin audit log and a per-request history.

• An API for your own forms

  Build “contact support” on your own site and let Docket handle the request, the emails and the customer’s reply page behind it.

• Email that keeps trying

  Outgoing mail is queued and retried rather than quietly dropped when your provider has a bad day.

Installing it

You need Docker, and nothing else. No Node.js, no PostgreSQL, no build step — the image is prebuilt and PostgreSQL comes with it.

1. Get the two files

   A compose file and an environment file. That is the whole setup.

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stack256org/docket/main/docker-compose.yml
   curl -o .env https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stack256org/docket/main/.env.docker.example

2. Set two values

   APP_SECRET (32+ random characters, from openssl rand -base64 36) and NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL. Everything else has a working default.

3. Start it

   This pulls the image, starts PostgreSQL, prepares the database, and leaves the app and its worker running.

   docker compose up -d

4. Make your own login

   A separate, deliberate step, so you see whether it worked rather than it failing quietly inside a background service.

   docker compose run --rm app \
     pnpm create:admin you@example.com "Your Name" "a-strong-password"

No mail server yet? Every outgoing message — sign-in links included — is written to the worker log instead of sent. That is enough to try the whole product before configuring SMTP.

What it needs

Have a look at the code

Docket is the second of 256. The README covers backups, the public API, deploying elsewhere, and everything else in detail.