#Diffinery

An open-source, self-hostable git forge with GitHub Actions–compatible CI, built for teams of people and AI agents, running entirely on Cloudflare.

Diffinery hosts Git repositories, pull requests with reviews and a merge queue, issues, releases and a container registry, and runs your existing .github/workflows/*.yml files as they are. AI agents get accounts of their own, with guardrails the server enforces, and work through MCP, the REST API, git or the CLI. Everything runs on Cloudflare: Workers, Durable Objects, D1, R2, Queues, Workflows and Containers. There are no servers to run, and you can deploy your own instance to your own Cloudflare account.

• Website and public instance: diffinery.com
• Documentation: diffinery.com/docs (llms.txt for AI assistants)
• Source: diffinery.com/codician/diffinery, where development happens. github.com/codician-team/diffinery is a mirror of it.

#Contents

• Why Diffinery
• Features
• Self-host on your own Cloudflare account
• How it runs on Cloudflare
• Develop locally
• Repository layout
• What Diffinery doesn't do (yet)
• FAQ
• Contributing, security and license

#Why Diffinery

• Git hosting, pull requests and CI in one serverless app. One Cloudflare Worker serves the web UI, git over HTTPS, a GitHub-compatible REST and GraphQL API, and an MCP server. Each repository is its own Durable Object with its own SQLite database, so repositories scale out instead of sharing one database server.
• Your GitHub Actions workflows run unchanged. The same triggers, expressions, matrices, needs, outputs, reusable workflows, environments, secrets, variables, OIDC, service containers and Docker. Marketplace actions (uses: owner/repo@ref) are downloaded and run. Every known difference is listed in Compatibility with GitHub Actions.
• Runners that exist only while a job runs. Each job gets a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 container on Cloudflare Containers, billed by Cloudflare only while it runs. The default size has 4 vCPUs and 12 GiB of memory, and jobs that use little of it move to smaller sizes on their own. Self-hosted runners cover macOS, Windows, Arm and GPUs.
• Built for AI agents, with a human in the loop. Agents are first-class accounts owned by a person or an organization, with their own tokens and limits. They can't push or merge to protected branches unless a rule allows it, their pull requests need a human approval, and every commit they make records who they act for. Agent tasks run Claude Code, Codex or your own command in a sandbox and open a pull request.
• Secure by default. Passkey sign-in with no passwords, invite-only accounts, branch protection, push protection that blocks leaked credentials, envelope-encrypted secrets, kill switches and an append-only audit log.
• Moving from GitHub is one step. A server-side importer brings a repository or a whole organization over with its history, issues, pull requests, reviews and releases, and gh, Octokit, VS Code and JetBrains IDEs work against Diffinery.

#Features

#Self-host on your own Cloudflare account

Diffinery is designed to be deployed by anyone to their own Cloudflare account and domain. Nobody who uses your instance needs a Cloudflare account; only the deployment does.

You need:

• A Cloudflare account on the Workers Paid plan, with R2 enabled. Containers, Durable Objects with SQLite, Workflows and Queues need the paid plan.
• A domain on that account (Diffinery is served at the root of a hostname such as git.example.com).
• A Cloudflare API token with the permissions listed in Deploy your own Diffinery.
• Node.js 22, pnpm 10, Docker, jq, curl and openssl on the machine you deploy from.

Deploy:

git clone https://diffinery.com/codician/diffinery.git   # or the GitHub mirror
cd diffinery

export CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN=...            # never commit it
export CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID=...
export DIFFINERY_DOMAIN=git.example.com    # your hostname
export BOOTSTRAP_ADMINS=you@example.com    # who becomes site administrator on first sign-in

scripts/setup.sh --dry-run                 # checks tools, token and config without changing anything
scripts/setup.sh                           # creates the Cloudflare resources and deploys

The setup script creates whatever is missing in your account (the D1 database, R2 bucket and lifecycle rules, queues, a Turnstile widget and a Cloudflare Access application for email recovery), applies the database migrations, deploys the Worker and the runner image, generates the Worker's own secrets once, and checks that the site answers. Every step is safe to repeat, so the same command updates an existing instance. Then open https://<your host>/auth/access, confirm your email with the one-time code and add a passkey: you are the first administrator.

You can also deploy from CI with the included Deploy workflow on Diffinery or GitHub Actions. The full guide, including email sending, DNS, Access and troubleshooting, is Deploy your own Diffinery, and every setting is described in Configuration.

#How it runs on Cloudflare

More in Architecture.

#Develop locally

pnpm install
pnpm -r build && pnpm -r typecheck && pnpm -r test
pnpm --filter @diffinery/app db:migrate:local
pnpm dev                                    # http://localhost:8787, signed in as dev@diffinery.local
pnpm --filter @diffinery/app e2e            # wrangler dev, real git, the runner agent and Chromium

pnpm dev runs the Worker under wrangler dev with local D1, R2 and queues, so you need no Cloudflare account to work on Diffinery. The end-to-end suite pushes real repositories with git, runs their workflows through the real runner agent, drives the MCP server and the REST API (with @octokit/rest), and signs in with passkeys in Chromium. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

#Repository layout

apps/diffinery          the Worker: web UI, git, REST/GraphQL, MCP, Actions, D1 migrations, docs, e2e tests
apps/cli                the `diffinery` command-line client
apps/vscode             the VS Code, Cursor and Windsurf extension
apps/jetbrains          the JetBrains IDE plugin
plugins                 the Claude Code and Codex plugins (marketplaces in .claude-plugin/ and .agents/plugins/)
containers/runner       the runner agent, sandbox server and the container image
packages/git-core       git objects, packfiles, deltas, diff and merge, in pure TypeScript
packages/workflow-yaml  the GitHub Actions workflow parser, expressions, matrices and cron
packages/shared         types shared by the Worker and the runner
scripts                 setup, bootstrap and deploy scripts for Cloudflare

#What Diffinery doesn't do (yet)

Diffinery is honest about its gaps. Today it has no hosted macOS, Windows or Arm runners (use self-hosted runners), no forks, no app marketplace, and nothing like Codespaces, Pages or Discussions. Some GitHub events, such as issues and issue_comment, are accepted in workflows but never start a run. The full list is in Compatibility with GitHub Actions and Diffinery vs GitHub.

#FAQ

What is Diffinery? An open-source git forge and CI platform that runs entirely on Cloudflare. It replaces GitHub's code hosting, pull requests and GitHub Actions in one app that you can self-host on your own Cloudflare account.

Is Diffinery a self-hosted GitHub alternative? Yes. Like Gitea, Forgejo or GitLab, you can run it yourself, but instead of a server or a Kubernetes cluster it deploys to Cloudflare's serverless platform, and its CI runs GitHub Actions workflow files instead of a format of its own.

Do my GitHub Actions workflows run without changes? Most do. Diffinery reads .github/workflows/*.yml with the same syntax and runs marketplace actions. Jobs that need hosted macOS, Windows or Arm runners need a self-hosted runner. See Compatibility with GitHub Actions.

What does it cost to run? Diffinery is free and open source under the Apache License 2.0. Running it costs whatever your own Cloudflare account bills: the Workers Paid plan plus usage. Hosted runners are Cloudflare Containers, which bill only while a job runs.

Does it work with AI coding agents? Yes. Agents connect over MCP (https://<your host>/mcp), the REST API, git or the GitHub CLI. There are guides for Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, and a plugin for Claude Code and Codex, installable with claude plugin marketplace add https://diffinery.com/codician/diffinery.git (sources in plugins/). See Connect AI apps.

Can I move my repositories from GitHub? Yes. The importer brings a repository or a whole organization with history, issues, pull requests, reviews and releases. Secret names come over with a field to enter each value. See Migrate from GitHub.

Where is development happening? On Diffinery itself, at diffinery.com/codician/diffinery. Diffinery's own CI, deploys and pull requests run there. The GitHub repository is a mirror.

#Contributing, security and license

• Contributing: see CONTRIBUTING.md. Please follow the Code of Conduct.
• Security: please don't open public issues for vulnerabilities. Report them privately as described in SECURITY.md.
• License: Apache License 2.0. See NOTICE.