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Reference·3 min read

FAQ — the questions we get most

Is it free (yes), do I need k8s expertise (no), what's the hosted onramp (fork provisioning only).

FAQ

Is it really free?

Yes. The local kind cluster costs $0 to run. You supply your own machine. If you deploy to a paid cloud Kubernetes, you pay the cloud — not us.

The BSL 1.1 license is free for self-hosting forever. The only paid tier is the commercial hosted platform (which is a separate offering not covered by this repo — see Licensing).

Do I need a Kubernetes background?

No. The console is designed so you never need to touch kubectl for normal operation. You'll need Docker Desktop running and the ability to brew install a few tools. If you can follow the Quickstart, you have enough.

If something goes wrong, you might need to read kubectl logs output. But the intended path is: use the UI, and only drop to CLI when the UI can't do what you want.

What does the hosted landing site actually do?

Three things and only three things:

  1. Sign you in via GitHub OAuth.
  2. Fork the upstream repo to your account.
  3. Walk you through installing the GitHub App on your fork.

That's it. It does not run your cluster. It does not host your code. Once you've forked, you clone your fork locally and run everything from there.

Can I skip the landing site entirely?

Yes. Clone the upstream repo directly:

git clone https://github.com/jaredzwick/equity-platform ~/equity-platform
cd ~/equity-platform
./local/up.sh

You lose the fork-provisioning convenience and the GitHub App install helper, but the platform itself doesn't need the landing site at all.

Why GitHub? Can I use GitLab or Bitbucket?

GitHub is the current default because ArgoCD's GitHub integration is the best-documented. Nothing about the platform is fundamentally tied to GitHub — the writeback path uses the GitHub Contents API, which would need a small adapter for GitLab/Bitbucket. Contributions welcome (see Contributing).

What data do you collect from me?

The landing site stores:

  • Your GitHub username and avatar URL (to display in the header).
  • Your fork name (to know which repo to point you at).
  • An encrypted session cookie so you don't have to sign in every time.

That's the entire list. We don't have your GitHub token beyond the OAuth session; we don't have access to your fork after you sign out (unless you separately installed the GitHub App, which is scoped to that one repo).

We don't run analytics beyond first-party server logs, and we don't sell anything.

Is the AI scorer configurable?

Not yet from the UI. The scoring rubric is currently hard-coded to a specific archetype (boring, cash-flowing, sub-$5M SDE, service-heavy). A per-user rubric — "score for e-commerce with >$1M revenue" — is on the internal roadmap but not shipped.

For now: use the deal filter to narrow the feed, and read the thesis paragraph to decide fit.

Can I use this for something other than buying businesses?

Sure. The platform layer (bootstrap/, apps/, charts/, console/) is a general-purpose multi-tenant k8s platform. LamboApp is one tenant on top. Nothing stops you from adding your own tenants for whatever you want to run.

How do I get help?