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Install TOPS

Gets TOPS running on your own machine. Five to ten minutes, most of it waiting for Docker to pull images.

Before you start

  • Docker, with Compose v2. That's the whole list — no PHP, no Composer, no Node, no npm, no database to set up separately.
  • You do not need an AWS account or a Firebase project to try TOPS. The default login is ordinary email and password, and connecting a real AWS account is a separate, explicit step you can skip and come back to.

Steps

  1. Run the installer. The one-line command is in the README's Install section — copy it from there rather than from here, so there's exactly one canonical copy. It pulls the published images from Docker Hub, generates a .env with its own application key, and starts the stack.

  2. Answer the AWS question. Partway through, the installer asks whether you want to connect an AWS account now. It's safe to say no — nothing about running TOPS or trying it out depends on that answer, and you can run it later. See Connect your first AWS account.

  3. Open the app and register. Once the installer says it's up, go to http://localhost:8080 and create an account — the first one you create is yours. Sign-up and password-reset emails are captured locally at http://localhost:8090 instead of being sent anywhere, so nothing needs an SMTP server to get started.

When it goes wrong

"the Docker daemon is not reachable." Docker is installed but your user can't talk to it yet. See the README's troubleshooting section — the fix is a group membership change and a re-login.

Port 8080 is already in use, or a container with that name already exists. Both are covered, with the exact fix, in the same troubleshooting section.

Something else. DEBUG.md in the repository has more symptoms and causes than fit on this page.

Next

Source of truth for this page: the README's Install section, kept there deliberately so installation has exactly one canonical copy.