Conduit

A lightweight tunneling service that exposes local services to the internet through a public server — similar to ngrok, but self-hosted.

Deploy Conduit on a public server (e.g., https://conduit.example.com), then create tunnels from your local machine. Point a tunnel at a local endpoint (e.g., localhost:8000) and it becomes accessible at a subdomain like https://black-fox-123.conduit.example.com.

Features

• HTTP & TCP tunneling — automatically detected based on the target scheme
• Subdomain routing — each tunnel gets a unique subdomain on the server
• Auto-generated tunnel names — random color-animal-number names when none is provided
• Local tunnel monitor — web UI on :8181 with SSE-based live request/response inspection
• API key authentication — simple shared-key auth between client and server
• Minimal footprint — single binary, no external dependencies

Architecture

┌──────────────┐         WebSocket          ┌──────────────────┐
│ conduit      │◄──────────────────────────► │ conduit          │
│ tunnel       │    (control + streams)      │ serve            │
│ (client)     │                             │ (public server)  │
├──────────────┤                             ├──────────────────┤
│ HTTP Fwd  or │                             │ Raw TCP listener │
│ TCP Fwd      │                             │ Subdomain router │
├──────────────┤                             │ WS upgrade       │
│ Tunnel       │                             └──────────────────┘
│ Monitor :8181│
└──────────────┘

The server accepts raw TCP connections, reads the HTTP Host header to determine routing. Requests to the base domain hit the control API; requests to subdomains are forwarded over WebSocket to the matching tunnel client. The client then forwards traffic to the local target via either a reverse-proxy (HTTP) or direct TCP dial.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25+ (or Docker)

Build

# Local build (all platforms)
make build_local

# Docker
make docker_build_local

Server

Run the server on a publicly accessible host:

conduit serve \
  --server https://conduit.example.com \
  --bind 0.0.0.0:8080 \
  --api_key your-secret-key

Or with Docker:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -e CONDUIT_SERVER=https://conduit.example.com \
  -e CONDUIT_API_KEY=your-secret-key \
  conduit:latest

Client

Create a tunnel to expose a local service:

# HTTP tunnel (auto-generates name)
conduit tunnel \
  --server https://conduit.example.com \
  --api_key your-secret-key \
  --target http://localhost:8000

# Named TCP tunnel
conduit tunnel \
  --server https://conduit.example.com \
  --api_key your-secret-key \
  --name my-service \
  --target localhost:5432

The local tunnel monitor is available at http://localhost:8181 for HTTP tunnels.

Configuration

All options can be set via CLI flags or environment variables (CONDUIT_ prefix):

Server (conduit serve)

Flag	Env Var	Default	Description
--server	CONDUIT_SERVER	http://localhost:8080	Public server address
--api_key	CONDUIT_API_KEY	—	API key (required)
--bind	CONDUIT_BIND	0.0.0.0:8080	Listen address
--log_level	CONDUIT_LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level
--log_format	CONDUIT_LOG_FORMAT	text	Log format (text or json)

Client (conduit tunnel)

Flag	Env Var	Default	Description
--server	CONDUIT_SERVER	http://localhost:8080	Conduit server address
--api_key	CONDUIT_API_KEY	—	API key (required)
--name	CONDUIT_NAME	(auto-generated)	Tunnel subdomain name
--target	CONDUIT_TARGET	—	Local target address (required)
--log_level	CONDUIT_LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level
--log_format	CONDUIT_LOG_FORMAT	text	Log format (text or json)

Server API

Endpoint	Description
/_conduit/tunnel?tunnelName=<name>&apiKey=<key>	WebSocket tunnel registration
/_conduit/info?apiKey=<key>	JSON list of active tunnels

Project Structure

├── cmd/             # Cobra CLI commands (root, serve, tunnel)
├── config/          # Configuration parsing & logging setup
├── server/          # TCP listener, subdomain routing, WebSocket upgrade
├── tunnel/          # Tunnel, Stream, and Forwarder abstractions
├── store/           # In-memory request/response recording for the monitor
├── web/             # Local tunnel monitor HTTP server & SSE streaming
├── types/           # Shared message types
├── pkg/maps/        # Generic concurrent map
├── build/           # Compiled binaries (gitignored in practice)
├── Dockerfile       # Single-stage Docker build
└── Makefile         # Build & release targets

License

See repository for license details.