Deployment

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Cortex ships as a Docker Compose stack. This page covers the default deployment, the environment variables you need to set, and recommendations for running in production.

Default stack

The docker-compose.example.yml defines nine services:

Service	Image	Default port	Purpose
`surrealdb`	surrealdb/surrealdb:v2.1.7	8000	Graph + relational database
`postgres`	postgres:16-alpine	5432	Auth, audit trail, documents, provider credentials
`meilisearch`	getmeili/meilisearch:v1.12	7700	Full-text search engine
`minio`	minio/minio:latest	9000 / 9001	S3-compatible object storage
`minio-init`	minio/mc:latest	—	Init container: creates the storage bucket
`ollama`	ollama/ollama:latest	11434	Local embeddings (bge-m3) and optional LLM
`cortex_api`	built from `deploy/Dockerfile.api`	9096	REST API
`cortex_mcp`	built from `deploy/Dockerfile.mcp`	3001	MCP server
`cortex_ui`	built from `cortex/ui/Dockerfile`	8080	Web UI

All services use health checks. cortex_api waits for SurrealDB, PostgreSQL, MeiliSearch, MinIO and Ollama to be healthy before starting. cortex_mcp waits for cortex_api and Ollama.

Environment variables

Required

Variable	Purpose
`SURREAL_USER`	SurrealDB root username
`SURREAL_PASS`	SurrealDB root password
`PG_PASSWORD`	PostgreSQL password
`MEILI_MASTER_KEY`	MeiliSearch master API key
`S3_ACCESS_KEY`	MinIO (S3) access key
`S3_SECRET_KEY`	MinIO (S3) secret key
`ENCRYPTION_KEY`	AES-256-GCM key for provider credential encryption (base64, 32 bytes)

Optional (with defaults)

Variable	Default	Purpose
`SURREAL_NS`	cortex	SurrealDB namespace
`SURREAL_DB`	cortex	SurrealDB database name
`PG_DATABASE`	cortex	PostgreSQL database name
`PG_USER`	cortex	PostgreSQL username
`S3_BUCKET`	cortex	MinIO bucket name
`CORTEX_API_KEY`	(empty)	API key for REST/MCP authentication
`CORS_ORIGIN`	http://localhost:8080	Allowed CORS origin for REST API
`MCP_CORS_ORIGINS`	https://claude.ai,https://chatgpt.com	Allowed CORS origins for MCP server
`OLLAMA_EMBED_MODEL`	bge-m3	Ollama embedding model
`OLLAMA_LLM_MODEL`	mistral	Ollama LLM model (for optional local inference)
`API_PORT`	9096	REST API port
`MCP_PORT`	3001	MCP server port
`UI_PORT`	8080	Web UI port
`ALLOWED_EMAILS`	(empty)	Comma-separated email whitelist for JWT auth
`SUPABASE_JWT_SECRET`	(empty)	JWT verification secret for Supabase auth

Minimum hardware

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	4 cores	8 cores
RAM	8 GB	16 GB
Disk	20 GB	50+ GB (depends on catalogue size and embeddings)

Ollama with the bge-m3 embedding model is the most memory-intensive component. If you do not need local embeddings, you can remove the Ollama service and save resources.

Production hardening

TLS termination

The Docker Compose stack does not include TLS. For production, put a reverse proxy in front:

Internet -> [nginx/Caddy/Traefik with TLS] -> cortex_api:9096
                                            -> cortex_mcp:3001
                                            -> cortex_ui:8080

Network binding

By default, all services except the UI bind to 127.0.0.1. The UI binds to 0.0.0.0:8080. In production, bind the UI to 127.0.0.1 as well and serve it through the reverse proxy.

Secrets management

Generate ENCRYPTION_KEY with openssl rand -base64 32.
Generate CORTEX_API_KEY with openssl rand -hex 32.
Use a secrets manager (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, etc.) or Docker secrets instead of plain .env files in production.

Resource limits

Add resource limits to your Docker Compose services:

deploy:
  resources:
    limits:
      memory: 2G
      cpus: "1.0"

Backups

SurrealDB

SurrealDB data is stored in a Docker volume (surreal_data). Back up via the HTTP export endpoint:

curl -X GET http://localhost:8000/export \
  -u "root:YOUR_PASS" \
  -H "surreal-ns: cortex" \
  -H "surreal-db: cortex" \
  -o cortex-surreal-backup.surql

PostgreSQL

docker compose exec postgres pg_dump -U cortex cortex > cortex-pg-backup.sql

MinIO

Use the MinIO client (mc) to mirror the bucket:

mc alias set local http://localhost:9000 ACCESS_KEY SECRET_KEY
mc mirror local/cortex ./backup/minio-cortex

Backup schedule

For production, automate backups at least twice daily. Store backups off-host (S3-compatible remote, separate server, etc.).

Upgrading

Pull the latest code: git pull
Rebuild images: docker compose -f docker-compose.example.yml build
Restart: docker compose -f docker-compose.example.yml up -d

Data volumes persist across rebuilds. Check the CHANGELOG for migration notes before upgrading.

What next?

Check the security posture: 07-security-and-data
Frequently asked questions: 09-faq