Exploring Knecht Cloud for DDEV & AI: Installation – Part 1
Samuel Reichör from Linz is currently looking for agencies and testers to try out his new project, Knecht Cloud. Built to streamline DDEV workflows for CMSes like TYPO3, Drupal, and Craft CMS, this promising tool is still under active development and has just hit version v0.10.0. In this first part, I take Knecht Cloud for a test drive by setting it up from scratch on a Hetzner CX23 VPS.
His open call for testers and agencies can be found on LinkedIn. I’d strongly recommend getting in touch with Samuel, since I always appreciated his professional perspective on web development challenges (and AI assisted coding). It’s fun to work with him!
Installation on a hetzner VPS
I purchased a Hetzner CX23 and chose Ubuntu 24.04 as operating system, see https://www.hetzner.com/de/cloud/cost-optimized/.
Connect as root to the server and copy the curl command from https://github.com/knecht-works/knecht-cloud#hosting:
The knecht installer asks for the domain for this new instance:
I’ll use „knecht.mandrasch.dev“ in my case.
Once the installation has been finished, you’ll get the information for your DNS setup – as well as the firewall settings:
At my domain provider, I need to adjust the DNS Entries like this:
On hetzner console, I added a firewall and only opened the required ports as described by the installation script:
Afterwards, I’m able to access the web installer in the browser via https://knecht.mandrasch.dev – which automatically redirects to the initial setup page:
After signing in to GitHub, you’ll be guided through the creation of a GitHub App:
See https://knecht.works/updates/gh-auth-evolution for more technical background information.
If you don’t want to give full access to all repositories yet, you can just select some repositiories for your test drive with Knecht – and add other ones later:
After creating the custom GitHub App, you’re able to sign into Knecht Cloud with your GitHub account:
And… that’s it! You’re now the admin of your very own Knecht Cloud dashboard:
Quick exploration of features
Setting up a DDEV project
Setting up a project is a simple multi-step process:
Workflows
This is a major feature of Knecht, which also allows you to interact with AI agents:
Runs
Your workflows can then be executed on your projects, via the „Start workflow“ dropdown – which results in a „run“:
Online preview of your project (runs)
The awesome thing about Knecht Cloud – you can preview the workflow output directly in your browser. Knecht Cloud is able to to boot up and interact with the DDEV project on the VPS:
See https://knecht.works/updates/sandbox-rollback for more background information on this.
Terminal and IDE access to your runs (in the browser)
You can also open up a terminal in your browser – or check out the source code files via „Open in IDE“:
AI Agent Settings
You can chose from different providers – and their models:
To be continued …
The thing that I’m excited about is the new „Knecht now replies on GitHub“ feature. I hope to find time to explore this in another part of these article series. This would allow me to quickly create PRs while chatting in GitHub issues – on my smartphone.
To use AI assistance within these workflows, I’m also eager to connect my OpenCode Go API key to Knecht Cloud – and see how this will work out.
Project links:
Have you tried Knecht Cloud already? Let me know on Mastodon or Bluesky! And there is also brand new Knecht Discord.
Just some first thoughts
Minor thing: Personally, I think using sslip.io would be easier for initial setups and test installations, as configuring external domain DNS is always a bit tedious. I already submitted a feature proposal (github.com/knecht-works/knecht-cloud/issues/10 ).
Another idea of mine was to open up Knecht to non-DDEV projects as well, while disabling the preview feature for those cases. This would allow me to trigger a new feature PR directly from my smartphone for projects like https://github.com/mandrasch/karenz-wizard (Astro/NodeJS) using OpenCode Go, which lacks a mobile app.
Update: Adding non-DDEV projects was already added in v0.10.0 🤩
As someone who isn’t really a friend of „creating pre-defined workflows“, I’d prefer a more „direct“ approach regarding the UX. But this would be a competition to the current local workflows of developers, juggling some parallel sessions with Claude Code, Codex, OpenGo on their laptops – which currently works fine for most developers I assume.
There is a big question mark about how web agencies want to automate their workflows I guess – I’m excited to see with what Samuel will come up in next versions.
Disclaimer: I’m not currently in the business of not having to do multiple update to CMS projects every week – therefore I’m far from being the best judge on this. 😉 I take a more general developers perspective on this.
Because I found the preview as general feature so exciting, I experimented with a small fork in consultation with Samuel (https://github.com/mandrasch/quick-ddev-previews). I still think it would be cool(er) if this feature eventually made its way into the main project, as I don’t really have the time resources to maintain it.
The thing I admire most is that Samuel builds this thing in public, therefore I was able to get some valuable insights via his project updates: https://knecht.works/updates
Much success (and fun) to you, Samuel!