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Hedgehog

Infrastructure Management Tool Suite

Hedgehog is a family of open-source tools for server management, automation, and infrastructure documentation. It was created out of the need for a tool that does exactly what I need it to do, and out of a desire to learn how to build something bigger than a one-off script. If it proves useful to someone else and saves them the trouble of writing their own solution, so much the better.

About the Project


Hedgehog started out as a web-based server management panel. It has gradually evolved into a modular software family, where each component can be used independently or as part of a larger whole. The main reason I’m building it is to learn how to design and maintain a real-world system over the long term—not just write it once and forget about it.

Development is proceeding on a component-by-component basis. So far, HedgehogPanel and HedgehogDaemon have been publicly released; other components in the family are still in development, and I will release them once they are ready for use.

Modular

Each component works independently

Open Source

The panel is available under the Apache 2.0 license

Multiplatform

The goal is to support both Linux and Windows

Self-hosted

Everything runs on your own infrastructure

Components of the family


Hedgehog is not a single program, but rather several separate tools that can work together. Below are the components that have already been publicly released.

HedgehogPanel

A web-based control panel for managing servers and services, written in C# using .NET and PostgreSQL. It offers user management, server and service ownership assignment, role-based access control, and a clear, intuitive browser-based interface. It communicates with managed servers via gRPC. It is being developed as a .NET-based alternative to existing solutions such as Pterodactyl or Portainer.

Status: Under active development

HedgehogDaemon

A lightweight background process written in Rust that runs on every managed server. It handles the process lifecycle (startup, shutdown, monitoring), collects metrics, and forwards logs, and offers a WASM-based plugin system. It communicates with the control panel via gRPC and can continue to function even when the control panel is unavailable.

Status: documented, implementation upcoming

Other components

The family continues to grow with the addition of new tools. These aren't public yet, and I'll introduce them once they're ready for use.

Status: in development, not yet released

Technical Specifications


HedgehogPanel

Language: C#
Framework: .NET
Database: PostgreSQL
Frontend: HTML / CSS / JS
License: Apache 2.0

HedgehogDaemon

Language: Rust
Communication: gRPC
Plugins: WASM
Platforms: Linux, Windows
Requirements: minimal; a single binary file

Code and Development


Hedgehog is developed openly on GitHub—the code, issues, and future plans are all public. Feel free to take a look at how it’s built, use it yourself, or contribute.

Current status: under active development

HedgehogPanel is available under the Apache 2.0 license. The licenses for the other components are listed in their respective repositories.