BASTION

Sovereign Infrastructure · Operations · AI

A self-hosted node in a box: a pruned Bitcoin node and Core Lightning behind Tor, private DNS and WireGuard, observability, one web hub, and a Claude Code AI control plane. It is all Docker, and one script drives it.

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Warning

A Lightning node holds real funds. This software is provided as-is; use it at your own risk. Before you fund the node, read disaster recovery and set up the host firewall.

Design

• Tor-first. All Bitcoin, Lightning, watchtower and relay traffic goes out through Tor. The node is reachable only through its .onion.
• Segmented. Each stack runs on its own bridge network. One narrow bastion-transit network carries the few services that must cross stacks.
• Secrets as files. Tokens and passwords reach containers as /run/secrets/* files, never as environment variables, so they never show up in docker inspect.
• Pinned. Every pulled image is pinned tag@sha256:, and every source-built component is pinned to a commit.
• One config file. bastion.conf is generated, validated and git-ignored. All the other files are derived from it.

The only traffic that crosses stacks goes over bastion-transit, to Tor:

bastion-transit 10.254.0.0/24

  bitcoind          ─┐
  lightningd  .10   ─┤
  teosd       .11   ─┼──►  tor .2  ──►  Tor network
  codedeck-bridge   ─┘

Stacks

Stack	Runs	Subnet
stack-network	Tor, Pi-hole, unbound, WireGuard. Owns bastion-transit and the Tor volume	10.10.0.0/24
stack-bitcoin	bitcoind (pruned), Core Lightning + plugins, RTL, teosd (opt-in)	10.20.0.0/24
stack-monitor	Prometheus, Grafana, node-exporter, Portainer	10.30.0.0/24
stack-web	The Hub, a static landing page that embeds every panel	10.40.0.0/24
stack-ai	Claude Code Router, CodeDeck+ bridge, MCP gateway, SearXNG, agent-docker (opt-in)	10.50.0.0/24

stack-network is the foundation. ./bastion up always starts it first and waits for Tor to be healthy. stop/down refuse to remove it while another stack is still running (--force overrides).

Quick start

You need: a Linux host (Debian/Ubuntu), Docker Engine ≥ 24 with the Compose plugin, 16 GB RAM, 4 cores, and at least 50 GB of disk (the node is pruned to about 20 GB of blocks).

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/deymosh/bastion.git
cd bastion
./bastion up

The first up:

1. creates bastion.conf and fills in generated values (tokens, the Pi-hole password, your uid/gid and timezone);
2. asks for the three values that have no default: the WireGuard public host and port, and the Lightning node alias;
3. writes secrets/ and deploys network → bitcoin → monitor → web → ai;
4. seeds RTL's config and mints its access rune from CLN.

Then:

• Apply the firewall. Every panel listens on 0.0.0.0 by design, so the host firewall is what controls access. See docs/firewall.md.
• Mount the backup drive at BACKUP_DEST (default /mnt/backup_cln) before up. CLN mirrors its wallet database there live, and up warns if nothing is mounted.
• Install the boot daemon. It brings Bastion up at boot and mirrors the channel backup (SCB):

  sudo cp services/bastion-daemon.service /etc/systemd/system/
  sudo systemctl edit --full bastion-daemon   # set WorkingDirectory= to this checkout
  sudo systemctl enable --now bastion-daemon
  journalctl -u bastion-daemon -f

Using it

Run ./bastion with no arguments for the interactive dashboard, which has a stack picker, live container status, a config editor and a log viewer. Every dashboard action is also available as a subcommand, for scripts and cron:

./bastion up    [stack...]        # deploy (default: all, in order)
./bastion stop  [stack|ctr...]    # stop a set of stacks, or one container
./bastion down  [stack...]        # stop + remove containers (data is kept)
./bastion build [stack...]        # build images without starting
./bastion logs  [stack|ctr...]    # follow logs

./bastion restart|start <ctr>     # one container
./bastion exec  <ctr> -- <cmd>    # run a command in a container
./bastion shell <ctr>             # bash if present, else sh

./bastion ps                      # every container: state, health, stack
./bastion versions                # pinned image vs. what is running
./bastion config [get|set]        # read / change bastion.conf (validated)
./bastion audit                   # routing profitability report
./bastion install-sysbox          # runtime for agent-docker (restarts Docker)
./bastion version                 # release + commit of this checkout

You can drop the stack- prefix (./bastion up web ai). Flags:

Flag	Effect
--with-watchtower	also run teosd, your own watchtower, for this run
--with-agent-docker	also run the agent's private Docker daemon (needs Sysbox)
--force, -f	allow stopping stack-network while other stacks run
--recreate-networks	drop a stale pre-transit bastion-network before up

To enable opt-in services permanently (including for the boot daemon), run ./bastion config set ENABLED_PROFILES watchtower,agent-docker.

You never need to run docker compose by hand: ./bastion passes --env-file bastion.conf and the right profiles on every call.

Access

The Hub at http://bastion.node links to every panel. Pi-hole resolves bastion.node to the host's LAN IP.

Service	Port	Notes
Hub	80	Opens panels embedded, or in a new tab
RTL	3000	Lightning UI (rune minted automatically)
CLN REST	3001	For wallet apps over WireGuard
CCR	3458	Claude Code Router UI (CCR_WEB_AUTH_TOKEN)
Portainer	4000 (https)	Mounts the Docker socket. Firewall it the most tightly of all
Grafana	4001	Starts with admin / admin. Change it on first login
Pi-hole	8081/admin	Password: ./bastion config get PIHOLE_PASSWORD
MCP gateway	8811/mcp	Bearer MCP_GATEWAY_TOKEN. See docs/mcp.md
Prometheus	9090
WireGuard	51820/udp	The only port meant to face the internet

Each panel is reachable over WireGuard, from localhost and from the trusted LAN. Anything internal is never published: bitcoind RPC, Tor SOCKS/control, CLN P2P, the TEOS API, the CCR gateway, SearXNG and the CodeDeck bridge.

Documentation

Configuration	Every bastion.conf setting, generated from utils/settings.registry
Disaster recovery	What to back up, how to restore, how to move hosts
Firewall	nftables ruleset and a ufw recipe
MCP gateway	The remote-agent tool endpoint, its namespaces and a ready-made .mcp.json
Agent Docker	A private Docker daemon for the AI agent on Sysbox, and its security model
Releases and upgrades	How versions are cut, and how to upgrade a running node
Changelog	What changed in each release
Tests	The static / unit / integration / weekly lanes, and how to run them
Stack READMEs	Per-stack services, addresses and operations (linked above)

Pinned components

The compose files and Dockerfiles are authoritative. ./bastion versions compares each pin with what is running.

Component	Version
Bitcoin Core	v26.0
Core Lightning	v26.06.8, with clboss v0.17.1-rc2, xrebalance v0.4.7, peerswap v7.0.1, watchtower-client be344ecc, trustedcoin v0.8.7
Tor	0.4.9.13 (ghcr.io/deymosh/tor, from the Tor Project Debian repo)
RTL	v0.15.8
Pi-hole · unbound · WireGuard	2026.07.2 · 1.22.0 · 1.0.20260223-r0-ls121
Prometheus · Grafana · Portainer · node-exporter	v3.14.0 · 13.2.1 · 2.45.0 · v1.12.1
Hub (nginx)	1.31.5-alpine
Claude Code Router	commit 3b0aebf (v3.1.3)
CodeDeck+ bridge	v0.12.0
MCP gateway · SearXNG	FastMCP 4.0.5 · 2026.9.21
agent-docker · Sysbox	docker 29.8.1-dind · 0.7.1

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_{MIT licensed - see LICENSE. No secrets in the tree: bastion.conf, secrets/ and stack-*/data/ are git-ignored.}