ExcaliDash

A self-hosted dashboard and organizer for Excalidraw with live collaboration features.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Upgrading
• Installation
  • Quickstart
  • Advanced
• Development
• Credits

Features

Persistent storage for all your drawings

Real time collaboration

Version history and restore

Automatically retain recent drawing snapshots, preview past versions from the editor, and restore a previous state when needed.

(Optional) Multi User Authentication, OIDC Support

Sign in with OIDC

Migration from v0.3

Admin Bootstrap

Admin Dashboard

Scoped internal & external sharing

Search your drawings

Drag and drop drawings into collections

Export/import your drawings for backup

Excalidash uses a non-proprietary archival format that stores your drawings in plain .excalidraw format

Upgrading

See release notes for a specific release.

ExcaliDash includes an in-app update notifier that checks GitHub Releases. If your deployment must not make outbound network calls, disable it on the backend:

UPDATE_CHECK_OUTBOUND=false

Docker Hub Upgrades

If you deployed using docker-compose.prod.yml (Docker Hub images), upgrade by pulling the latest images and recreating containers:

docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml pull && \
  docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

If you prefer a clean stop/start (more downtime, but simpler), you can do:

docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml down && \
  docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml pull && \
  docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Notes:

• Don’t add -v to down unless you intend to delete the persistent backend volume (your SQLite DB + secrets).
• Only add --remove-orphans if you previously ran a different Compose file for the same project name and need to remove old/renamed services.

Installation

Caution

This is a BETA deployment and production-readiness depends on deployment controls: use TLS, trusted reverse proxy, fixed secrets, backups, and endpoint rate limits.

Caution

ExcaliDash is in BETA. Please backup your data regularly.

Quickstart

Prereqs: Docker + Docker Compose v2.

Docker Hub (Recommended)

Docker Hub (Recommended)

# Download docker-compose.prod.yml
curl -OL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ZimengXiong/ExcaliDash/main/docker-compose.prod.yml

# Pull images
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml pull

# Run container
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

# Access the frontend at localhost:6767

For single-container deployments, JWT_SECRET can be omitted and will be auto-generated and persisted in the backend volume on first start. For portability and most production deployments, set a fixed JWT_SECRET explicitly.

By default, the provided Compose files set TRUST_PROXY=false for safer setup. Only set TRUST_PROXY to a positive hop count (for example, 1) when requests always pass through a trusted reverse proxy that correctly sets forwarded headers.

Docker Build

Docker Build

# Clone the repository (recommended)
git clone git@github.com:ZimengXiong/ExcaliDash.git

# or, clone with HTTPS
# git clone https://github.com/ZimengXiong/ExcaliDash.git

docker compose build
docker compose up -d

# Access the frontend at localhost:6767

Advanced

The root README keeps the install path short. See advanced deployment and operations for reverse proxy, auth/OIDC, database provider, offline, backup, password policy, and operational details.

For release-candidate validation across multiple local configurations, see the configuration lab.

Development

For contributor workflow, make dev starts the app in local single-user mode so you can reproduce editor bugs without going through login/onboarding. Use make dev-auth if you need to test local auth or OIDC flows from your backend/.env.

Clone the Repository

Clone the Repository

# Clone the repository (recommended)
git clone git@github.com:ZimengXiong/ExcaliDash.git

# or, clone with HTTPS
# git clone https://github.com/ZimengXiong/ExcaliDash.git

Frontend

Frontend

cd ExcaliDash/frontend
npm install

# Copy environment file and customize if needed
cp .env.example .env

npm run dev

Backend

Backend

cd ExcaliDash/backend
npm install

# Copy environment file and customize if needed
cp .env.example .env

# Generate Prisma client and setup database
npx prisma generate
npx prisma db push

npm run dev

Simulate Auth Onboarding (Development)

Simulate Auth Onboarding (Development)

To simulate first-run authentication choice flows in local development:

cd ExcaliDash/backend

# Preview what would change (no data modifications)
npm run dev:simulate-auth-onboarding:dry-run

# Simulate "fresh install" onboarding state
# (wipes drawings/collections/libraries and removes non-bootstrap users)
npm run dev:simulate-auth-onboarding:fresh

# Simulate "migration" onboarding state (ensures legacy data exists)
npm run dev:simulate-auth-onboarding:migration

After running a simulation while the backend is already running, wait about 5 seconds (auth mode cache TTL) or restart the backend before refreshing the UI.

Setup and Operational Scripts

Setup and Operational Scripts

In backend/package.json there are helper scripts for maintenance:

Script	Purpose
admin:recover	Emergency admin credential recovery/reset.

Admin recovery example:

cd backend
npm run admin:recover -- --identifier admin@example.com --generate --activate --must-reset

Common flags:

Flag	Description
--password "<new-password>"	Set explicit new password.
--generate	Generate a secure random password.
--activate	Activate the admin account immediately.
--promote	Promote user to admin role.
--must-reset	Force password reset on first login.
--disable-login-rate-limit	Temporarily disable login throttling for this operation.

Credits

If you find ExcaliDash useful, please consider sponsoring

• Example designs from:
  • https://github.com/Prakash-sa/system-design-ultimatum/tree/main
  • https://github.com/kitsteam/excalidraw-examples/tree/main
• The amazing work of Excalidraw & contributors