🏕️ Basecamp — The First Portable AI Agent Container with Network Auto-Discovery

v1.0.2 — the stack-gauntlet release (tested against a live 6-service AI stack):

• TabbyAPI + SillyTavern now discovered — auth-gated services (401/403) are fingerprinted and listed as [needs auth] so the connect screen can prompt for keys (previously invisible)
• Fixed hermes v0.20 wiring — named custom provider (providers.basecamp) with inline API key, sidestepping the #28660 security gate that blocks env keys for LAN endpoints; reasoning-effort turned off (local engines reject thinking params with HTTP 400); stale context probes cleared
• Ollama preferred for auto-select — hermes hard-requires ≥64K context, so headless mode picks an Ollama endpoint; OpenAI-compatible engines (TabbyAPI, vLLM) are still listed for interactive choice
• SearXNG probed via its fast static page — no more slow search-query probe losing the boot race

v1.0.1 — rebuilt on the official Hermes installer (the old pip3 install hermes-cli stub is gone), leaked-key fallback removed from tavern.sh, and the git history scrubbed of both. Build from source below.

One image. One command. It finds your AI stack and just works.

Basecamp bundles Hermes Agent (the full agent — tools, skills, memory, gateway) + Ollama (a brain it always has in its backpack), then does something nobody else's container does: it sniffs your network on first boot and auto-discovers your entire local AI stack — Ollama, TabbyAPI, vLLM, LiteLLM, LocalAI, llama.cpp, SearXNG, MCPO, Open WebUI, SillyTavern — and connects Hermes to the best brain it finds. No hardcoded URLs. No config files to hand-edit. Just docker run.

Why this is different

Everyone else	Basecamp
Manual compose file, hand-wired URLs	Auto-discovers your stack on first boot
One hardcoded provider	Picks the best brain it finds, falls back to its own Ollama
Agent config touches your host install	Container-only, env-scoped, cannot clobber a host Hermes
Separate agent + separate model server	One image, both inside, batteries included

Safety model (read this first)

Basecamp is container-only and is designed so it can never damage a Hermes install on the host that runs it:

• No writes into any Hermes home it doesn't own. Hermes runtime config (provider URL, key, model) is passed as environment variables, sourced from basecamp.env (chmod 600) at exec time. Basecamp never overwrites config.yaml or .env files — not in the container, and certainly not on the host.
• State lives in named volumes only. basecamp-hermes → /root/.hermes and basecamp-ollama → /root/.ollama inside the container. Nothing on the host is modified by running basecamp.
• No secrets in the image. API keys are collected at the connect screen, saved chmod 600 inside the volume, and injected into the dynamically generated tavern CLI. The static fallback tavern.sh ships with empty key placeholders.
• Hermes is installed with the official installer, never pip install hermes-cli (that PyPI package is an unrelated stub, not Hermes Agent).

Quick start

# Option A: pull the prebuilt image (Docker Hub)
docker pull jpanasuk/basecamp:1.0.2

# Option B: build from source
docker build -t local/basecamp:latest .

# Run against your AI docker network (named volumes keep state across runs)
docker run -it --rm \
  --name basecamp \
  --network your-ai-network \
  --gpus all \
  -p 11436:11434 \
  -v basecamp-ollama:/root/.ollama \
  -v basecamp-hermes:/root/.hermes \
  jpanasuk/basecamp:1.0.2

Or use the convenience launcher (auto-detects network + GPU, TTY-safe):

./basecamp.sh

First run shows the connect screen: pick your inference engine, enter API keys when prompted. Later runs skip it — config is saved in the volume.

What it discovers

Service	What Basecamp does with it
Ollama	Primary/secondary brain, lists available models
TabbyAPI / vLLM / LiteLLM / LocalAI / llama.cpp	Primary inference engine (OpenAI-compatible)
SearXNG	Wires search into the agent + tavern CLI
MCPO	Exposes MCP tools to the agent
Open WebUI / SillyTavern	Detects your chat UIs, reports them

Inside the container

Command	What it does
tavern status	Show connected services
tavern chat "hi"	Chat with your primary inference (streaming)
tavern models	List available models
tavern search "q"	Search via discovered SearXNG
tavern mcp	List/call discovered MCP tools
tavern rediscover	Re-scan for services
hermes	The Hermes Agent CLI, pointed at your stack
ollama	Manage basecamp's bundled Ollama

Layout

basecamp/
├── Dockerfile         # ubuntu:22.04 + Ollama + Hermes (official installer)
├── discover.py        # network scan, connect screen, tavern generator
├── tavern.sh          # static fallback CLI (no secrets)
├── entrypoint.sh      # first-run connect screen, env-scoped hermes config
├── basecamp.sh        # host-side launcher (docker only — never touches host config)
└── supervisord.conf   # Ollama only (hermes is exec'd, not supervised)

Development notes

• Test discovery locally without touching anything: BASECAMP_CONFIG=/tmp/bc.json BASECAMP_DISCOVERY=/tmp/bc-disc.json BASECAMP_ENV_FILE=/tmp/bc.env python3 discover.py serve
• discover.py is container-only by design. It writes only to paths given by BASECAMP_CONFIG / BASECAMP_DISCOVERY / BASECAMP_ENV_FILE (defaults are under /root/.hermes / /opt/basecamp inside the container).
• If a secret ever leaks into this repo: rotate it, then scrub git history before publishing.