The Catalogue lets you deploy a real, working service without hand-writing a Docker Compose file yourself. Pick a template, customize it, review exactly what will run, then deploy.
- Pick — choose a template from the Catalogue (e.g. Nextcloud, Notesnook)
- Customize — set the values specific to your deployment (ports, credentials, storage)
- Review — see the actual generated Compose configuration before anything runs, not an abstraction of it
- Deploy — goes through the same governance flow as any other action (see Governance & Approvals) — propose, review, approve, then it deploys for real
Once deployed, the new service is automatically registered — it shows up on your dashboard with health checks already wired up, no separate setup step.
The Catalogue currently ships with real, verified-working templates for:
- Nextcloud — file sync and sharing, with its own Postgres + Redis backing services
- Notesnook — a full self-hosted note-taking stack (identity, sync, SSE, and object storage services)
Both include real health-check-gated startup ordering, so the deploy flow waits for each dependency to actually report healthy before moving on — not just a fixed delay.
This is what actually happens, step by step, deploying the Nextcloud template:
- Pick Nextcloud from the Catalogue. You'll see a short description and what it deploys — in this case, three services: the Nextcloud app itself, a Postgres database, and Redis for caching.
- Customize — you'll be asked for the values this specific deployment needs: which port to expose it on, what the admin credentials should be, how much storage to allocate. Anything with a sensible default is pre-filled; you only need to change what matters to you.
- Review — before anything is proposed, you see the actual rendered Compose file: real service names, real port bindings, real environment variable keys (though secret values stay masked in the review — see the note below). This is not a summary of what will happen, it's the literal configuration that will run.
- Propose and approve — submitting the review creates a governed action request. If you're a solo operator, this may auto-approve (see Governance & Approvals); otherwise it waits for a second reviewer.
- Deploy — once approved, PrivateNexus creates the shared network and containers, and waits on each service's own health check before considering the next dependency ready. For Nextcloud specifically: Postgres and Redis must both report healthy before the Nextcloud app container starts.
- Done — the new Nextcloud instance shows up on your dashboard immediately, already health-checked, with its Recovery Score panel available like any other service.
The Compose review shows you real structure — service names, ports, which environment variables exist — but generated secret values (database passwords, admin credentials) are not displayed in plaintext during review, even though they're real and already generated. This is deliberate: the review step is for verifying what will be deployed, not for reading back credentials through an audit-adjacent screen. Generated credentials are available afterward through the normal secrets-access path for the deployed service.