What is Stakpak?
Stakpak is an open-source agent for infrastructure work: writing Terraform and Kubernetes manifests, debugging clusters, setting up CI/CD and watching deployments. It runs as a terminal app, inside Zed through the Agent Client Protocol, or as an MCP server and MCP proxy for other clients.
Its distinguishing idea is that the model can work with credentials without seeing them. Secret values are swapped for placeholders before anything reaches the model, a guardrail layer called Warden blocks destructive operations at the network level, and every file change is backed up so it can be reversed. Autopilot mode runs the agent as a background service on cron schedules and lets people reach it from Slack, Telegram or Discord.
The agent is Apache 2.0 and works with your own Anthropic, OpenAI or Gemini keys, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama. Stakpak, the Egyptian-founded company behind it, was acquired by Vercel in July 2026.
Is Stakpak worth it?
Stakpak is worth studying for how it handles secrets, and harder to recommend as a long-term dependency. Its secret substitution means the model reads, writes and compares credentials as placeholders, the pricing page says it redacts more than 210 secret types, and Warden enforces network-level policies that stop destructive commands before they run. General-purpose coding agents mostly leave that problem to whatever sandbox you put them in.
The repository has about 1,849 stars, 18 contributors and roughly 88,600 release downloads. Releases came quickly through spring 2026, up to v0.3.88 on 10 June, but the last commit landed on 6 July 2026. Vercel announced the acquisition in mid-July; coverage says the open-source projects stay available, and the README's install flow still works, but four months without a commit is a long pause for a tool that wants to run unattended on your servers.
Autopilot is the ambitious part. The docs ask for Docker, 2GB or more of RAM and swap on small hosts, and run a preflight check before start-up. Profiles control which model, tools and auto-approval each schedule or chat channel gets, which is the right separation: a five-minute health check should not have the same permissions as a person typing in #ops.
The paid tiers mostly buy convenience. Hacker at $15 a month includes $10 of model credit with a 10% top-up fee; Builder at $45 includes $35. Bringing your own keys skips the markup entirely, and the open-source build keeps session audit logs locally in SQLite. Self-hosting support is listed for Enterprise only.
For an operations team that wants an agent on a jump box today, the security model is ahead of the field. For one choosing a tool to grow with, the stalled repository and an owner whose own platform is the obvious destination argue for waiting to see what Vercel does with it.
Where it earns its place
A two-person platform team at a SaaS startup
Let an agent debug a failing Kubernetes deploy without handing it cluster credentials
Run stakpak in the terminal with a BYOK profile; kubeconfig and cloud keys are substituted before the model sees them and file edits are backed up. Cost is only the model tokens on your own key.
An on-call engineer at a 40-person company
Get a health check every five minutes and a Slack ping only when something breaks
stakpak up on a small VM with a cron schedule and a Slack channel route; a monitoring profile limits tools for scheduled runs. On Hacker, $15 a month covers 3 apps and $10 of credit.
A security lead reviewing agent tooling
Route an existing set of MCP servers through one audited proxy
stakpak mcp proxy reads mcp.toml, multiplexes upstream servers and redacts secrets from logs; mTLS is on by default for the local MCP server.
Before you commit
- Setup
- curl install script, Homebrew, a binary or the Docker image; stakpak init, then stakpak up for autopilot. The Docker image bundles kubectl, the AWS, gcloud and Azure CLIs.
- Integrations
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini and OpenAI-compatible endpoints; Slack, Telegram and Discord channels; MCP server and proxy; Zed via ACP; Terraform, Kubernetes, Dockerfile and GitHub Actions indexing.
- Data and privacy
- Apache 2.0. With your own keys, prompts go straight to your model provider and audit logs stay in local SQLite; paid tiers add centralised memory and logs on Stakpak's service, with no retention period published.
- Cost at scale
- Team is $450 a month for 50 apps and $350 of shared credit, unlimited users, plus $5 per extra app; top-ups carry a 7% to 10% fee, avoidable with your own keys.
- Limits
- Development has paused since July 2026; 44 open issues; autopilot on small Linux hosts needs swap and user lingering to survive logout.
What’s good
- Secret substitution keeps credential values away from the model
- Warden guardrails block destructive operations before they run
- Works with your own Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini or local models
- MCP server, MCP proxy and Zed integration via ACP
What’s not
- No commits since 6 July 2026, after the Vercel acquisition
- Autopilot needs Docker and 2GB+ RAM on the host
- Self-hosting support for the hosted features is Enterprise only
Best for
Small platform teams that want an infrastructure agent which never sees production secrets in plain text.
Stakpak alternatives
Stakpak: common questions
- Is Stakpak worth it?
- A careful design for letting an agent near production credentials, built by a team that went to Vercel in July and has barely touched the code since. We rate it 3.7 out of 5.
- How much does Stakpak cost?
- Agent free under Apache 2.0 with your own API keys. Hosted plans: Hacker $15/month (3 apps, $10 credits), Builder $45/month (10 apps, $35 credits), Team $450/month (50 apps, $350 shared credits), Enterprise custom.
- What are the downsides of Stakpak?
- No commits since 6 July 2026, after the Vercel acquisition; autopilot needs Docker and 2GB+ RAM on the host; self-hosting support for the hosted features is Enterprise only.
- Who is Stakpak best for?
- Small platform teams that want an infrastructure agent which never sees production secrets in plain text.
- How much does Stakpak cost for a team or in production?
- Team is $450 a month for 50 apps and $350 of shared credit, unlimited users, plus $5 per extra app; top-ups carry a 7% to 10% fee, avoidable with your own keys.
- Is Stakpak safe for company data?
- Apache 2.0. With your own keys, prompts go straight to your model provider and audit logs stay in local SQLite; paid tiers add centralised memory and logs on Stakpak's service, with no retention period published.
- What are the best Stakpak alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are goose, OpenCode, OpenHands and OpenAI Codex CLI.
Answers checked Nov 3, 2026.