What vops is

vops is an open-source command-line tool and local web dashboard for operating individual VPS instances and small, explicit sets of servers. It gives different providers and existing Linux hosts one vocabulary, then adds application deployment and day-two operations without turning each server into a platform.

Its shortest description is:

Local control plane. Agentless servers.

The problem it closes

VPS providers are simple until you need to compare them honestly or run the same workflow across more than one. Prices, locations, billing models, firewall capabilities, images and API shapes all differ. Once a machine exists, you still need SSH access, updates, hardening, backups, ingress, certificates and a repeatable application deployment path.

vops keeps those concerns in one local tool:

1. research providers and current plans;
2. create an explicit server plan before spending money;
3. provision a supported hourly-billed server, or register one you already own;
4. inspect and prepare the host over SSH;
5. install a catalog application or deploy a repository described by flui.yaml;
6. verify, monitor, update, back up or remove it through the same model.

Three objects to keep straight

• A server is a machine seen through a provider account. Provider commands list, plan, create and delete these resources.
• A host is a machine registered in the local vops inventory and reachable over SSH. It may have been created by vops or elsewhere.
• An application is a named install on a host. It comes from the bundled catalog or a flui.yaml manifest.

The distinction matters. Forgetting a host removes only a local inventory record; deleting a server asks the provider to destroy a billable resource.

The surfaces

vops is driven through:

• the CLI, which exposes every operation and is the authoritative reference;
• the local dashboard, opened by vops ui and served only on 127.0.0.1;
• the development-agent control surface, which exposes selected semantic operations without exposing raw provider or SSH credentials.

All three call the same underlying services. The dashboard and an agent are not alternate implementations of deployment.

vops and Flui

vops and Flui share the open flui.yaml application contract, but solve different operational problems.

	vops	Flui
Control plane	On your workstation	A coordinated platform environment
Target	Individual servers or small explicit sets	Managed application environments and fleets
Server requirement	No persistent vops controller	Platform runtime is part of the environment
Primary fit	Developers, indie teams, small VPS estates	Organizations that want an integrated platform

Use vops when the server itself is the unit you want to own and understand. Use Flui when you want the coordinated platform to be the unit of operation.

Current scope

Provider research and infrastructure commands cover Hetzner, Scaleway, Contabo, OVH and Cherry Servers with capability differences between them. Existing-host workflows can work with a reachable Linux server regardless of who provisioned it.

The project is still an early release. These docs describe behavior visible in the current source and CLI; where the controlled agent layer is still being integrated, its pages say so explicitly.