An open-source standup bot: MIT, one repository, no paid tier

git clone https://github.com/morgenruf/morgenruf.git
cd morgenruf/app && cp .env.example .env   # add your Slack app values
docker compose up -d

What the licence actually says

MIT, on the whole repository. Not open core, not source available, not a community edition with the useful half behind a sales call. One licence file, one repository, and the same code in the image that runs in production. Read it in about a minute: you may use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and sell it, including inside a company, as long as the copyright notice travels with it. There is no contributor agreement assigning your changes to anyone.

In practice that buys three things:

• You can read it. A standup bot sees everything your team is stuck on. Being able to check what it does with that is not paranoia.
• You can change it. Summary format, question types, the wording of a nudge. Fork it and run your fork; nothing checks that you did.
• It cannot be taken away. No price change, no acquisition, no sunset email.

The honest trade

A licence does not run anything. Someone has to, and that is one container, a Postgres and an HTTPS URL, with migrations that apply themselves. What running it on your own servers involves is a page of its own, down to the backups. It is a small job, but it is not zero. The free hosted instance CloudDrove runs removes it entirely, on the same code. Be clear which side of that you are on before switching.

What is in the box

• Async standups with per-person timezones, blockers, nudges and an edit window
• Random coffee chats that agree a time and book a Zoom meeting
• Peer recognition with a daily allowance and your own emoji
• Insights across both datasets
• Birthdays and work anniversaries in a channel, from a member profile that keeps day and month only
• Signed webhooks, automation rules, an MCP server, CSV export, a Helm chart

Every one of those is in the repository. There is no paid tier holding anything back, and what the bot does inside Slack is the same whether you run the published image or your own build of it.

Who maintains it

It is built and maintained by Anmol Nagpal and sponsored by CloudDrove, who run the free hosted instance and also sell setup and hosting on your own infrastructure. Paid work funds the project; it does not gate any of it. Issues and pull requests go to the same repository the releases are cut from, and the Helm chart is published from it too. The weekend that produced it explains why it is arranged this way.

If that arrangement ends tomorrow, you keep the source, the chart and your own database. That is the whole point of the licence, and it is worth checking a project can say the same before you put a daily ritual on it.

Other open-source options

There are a few self-hosted standup tools around, mostly smaller scripts that post a message and collect replies. They are fine for one team and one question set. The things that usually run out are per-person timezones, vacation handling, a dashboard non-engineers will use, and anything beyond standups. Pick by which of those you need rather than by star count. Against the hosted products, the comparison pages are the more useful read.

Per-feature admin grants, so the team lead runs standups without holding the API keys.

Getting started

The setup guides cover Docker Compose, Kubernetes and the Slack app. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes, most of it in Slack's settings.