Buff Community Edition
Buff on your own machine — free
Task-based development, “Ask”, research and a knowledge base on your model — for one organisation and three people. Code and documents stay with you; installation takes one command.
Objection 01
“Free means cut down”
A free version is usually a showcase you cannot actually work in.
The same product as in the cloud — within one team
Community, SaaS and Enterprise share one codebase. The free edition is limited by scale — one organisation, three users, up to 15 concurrent developments, one model per installation — not by what it can do.
Development by task
The analyst clarifies the task with questions; after your “approve”, the developer does it in a sandbox and the reviewer checks it — the result is a branch and a merge request in your repository.
Ask and research
A question about code and documents — an answer with sources, read-only. Research — the analyst and the reviewer prepare a document in Markdown and PDF.
Knowledge base
The organisation’s rules, facts and pitfalls, taken into account in every answer and every task.
Buff Code and your phone
Engineers work in Buff Code on the installation’s models, and the Buff app for iPhone and Android connects to it from the workspace.
Objection 02
“Our code and documents must not leave our premises”
Neither to someone else’s cloud nor to the tool’s vendor.
Everything runs on your side — only the licence check goes out
The installation runs the databases, git storage, task queue and agent sandboxes on your machine. The model is called with your key at your endpoint — a local model works too.
- Repositories, tasks, documents and answers are stored in Docker volumes on your machine.
- Git tokens stay in the connector file next to the installation — they are never sent to us.
- Once a day the installation checks its licence and sends exactly four fields: the installation ID, the version, the number of users and the number of runners.
- If there is no connection to buff.systems, the licence does not lapse and work carries on.
Objection 03
“Self-hosting means a week of setup”
Databases, queues, sandboxes, the network between them.
Three commands and five questions
The script asks for the organisation name, the administrator’s email, and the model address and key; it installs Docker and Sysbox itself, downloads and verifies the image, builds the sandbox and shows the first start until it says “ready”. Running it again is safe — it only updates what has changed.
git clone https://github.com/buffsystems/buff-community.git
cd buff-community
./install.shLinux
Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04, amd64. Runners work in Sysbox — without privileged containers and without the host socket.
macOS or Windows
Through Docker Desktop — for a personal machine: without Sysbox the container runs privileged.
Resources
From 4 CPUs and 8 GB of memory for one development at a time; 8 CPUs and 16 GB for three at once. About 12 GB of disk for images plus your repositories.
Model
A key to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: OpenRouter, your own LiteLLM, vLLM, Ollama.
Objection 04
“We want to work on our own model”
Or on the one we already pay for.
Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
OpenRouter, your own LiteLLM, vLLM, Ollama — the address, key and model name are set during installation and changed in .env. The edition also installs without internet: the images go into a directory next to the script, and the licence is pasted as a file.
Employees connect the Buff phone app to the installation — “Settings → Phone” in the workspace. The installation only needs outbound access to buff.systems: no inbound ports need opening. Mobile appObjection 05
“And when there are more than three of us?”
Or when we need rights, single sign-on and audit.
Enterprise — the same, for the whole company
Several organisations, roles and rights, sign-in through your IdP, an audit log, more people and runners, an air-gapped network and support under contract. Or the buff.systems cloud — no installation at all.
| Community | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | By contract |
| Organisations | One | Several |
| Users | Three | Per licence |
| Concurrent developments | Up to 15 | Per licence |
| Models | One OpenAI-compatible endpoint per installation | Your LiteLLM gateway with your providers and local models |
| Roles, rights, SSO, audit log | No — everyone sees everything | Yes, sign-in through your IdP |
| Support | Not provided; questions go to the repository | By contract |
Other questions
What people ask about Community Edition
Can a commercial company use it?
Yes, for its own internal work: the restriction is not the type of business but passing the product on to others. Selling access, renting it out or providing services to third parties with it is not allowed without written consent.
Whose are the code and documents Buff produced?
The organisation’s. The code, documents and reports the edition creates for it belong to it.
Is the licence perpetual?
Yes. The installation obtains it itself after registration in the admin panel — usually within a minute. Without a licence, sign-in and reading work, but new tasks, questions and research do not start.
How do I update?
git pull and ./install.sh: the script downloads the new image, rebuilds the sandbox and restarts the containers; database migrations are applied on start.
What if the machine has no internet?
The edition and sandbox images go into the images/ directory, stock images are carried over through your registry, and the licence is pasted as a file in the admin panel.
Where can I ask a question or report a bug?
In the issues of the buff-community repository on GitHub. Community Edition comes without technical support — Enterprise is there for that.
Where to start
Install Buff on your side and ask your first question about your code
You need a machine with Ubuntu or Docker Desktop and a model key. A few minutes after ./install.sh the installation is ready — then a connector to your git and the first question.
Free. Community Edition comes without technical support — questions are taken in the repository