Crow's Nest

The Crow's Nest is your private control panel for managing your Crow instance. It's accessible on your local network or via Tailscale — never exposed to the public internet.

What is this?

The Crow's Nest is a password-protected web interface served by your gateway. It gives you a point-and-click way to manage messages, blog posts, files, and settings — everything you can do through MCP tools, but in a browser.

Why would I want this?

• Quick overview — See your messages, recent posts, and storage usage at a glance
• Non-technical access — Manage Crow without using a terminal or AI conversation
• File management — Browse, upload, and delete stored files with drag-and-drop
• Settings — Change configuration without editing .env files
• Mobile-friendly — Access from your phone over your local network or Tailscale

Starting the Gateway

The Crow's Nest requires the gateway to be running. Depending on how you installed Crow, this may already be handled for you:

• Crow OS (Raspberry Pi) — The installer creates a crow-gateway systemd service that starts automatically
• Cloud (Render) — The gateway runs as the main process
• Docker — docker compose runs the gateway container
• Managed Hosting — Pre-configured, always running
• Desktop (stdio) — No gateway by default — you need to start it manually if you want the Crow's Nest or blog

Manual Start (Development / Desktop)

npm run gateway

This starts the gateway on port 3001 (or the port set in PORT / CROW_GATEWAY_PORT). Press Ctrl-C to stop.

Persistent Service (Self-Hosted)

For a self-hosted server (Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, etc.), create a systemd service so the gateway starts on boot and restarts on failure.

System-level service (runs as a dedicated user):

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/crow-gateway.service > /dev/null << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Crow Gateway
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=crow
WorkingDirectory=/home/crow/.crow/app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node servers/gateway/index.js
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
Environment=NODE_ENV=production

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable crow-gateway
sudo systemctl start crow-gateway

User-level service (runs as your own user, no sudo needed):

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user

cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/crow-gateway.service << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Crow Gateway
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=%h/.crow/app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node servers/gateway/index.js
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
Environment=NODE_ENV=production

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable crow-gateway
systemctl --user start crow-gateway

Verify it's running:

# Check service status
sudo systemctl status crow-gateway    # system-level
systemctl --user status crow-gateway  # user-level

# Test the health endpoint
curl http://localhost:3001/health

Accessing the Crow's Nest

Once the gateway is running:

From	URL
Same machine	http://localhost:3001/dashboard
LAN (another device on your network)	http://<server-ip>:3001/dashboard
Remote via Tailscale	http://<tailscale-ip>:3001/dashboard
Remote via tailscale serve	https://<hostname>.tail1234.ts.net/dashboard

Remote Access with tailscale serve

If you want HTTPS and a proper hostname without exposing the Crow's Nest to the internet:

# Serve the gateway over Tailscale with a valid HTTPS certificate
tailscale serve --bg --https=443 http://localhost:3001

This makes the Crow's Nest available at https://<hostname>.your-tailnet.ts.net/dashboard from any device on your Tailscale network. Only Tailscale-connected devices can reach it.

First Login

On first access, you'll be prompted to set a password. This is separate from any OAuth tokens or API keys — it's a simple password for browser access.

After setting your password, you'll see the Crow's Nest with its panel layout.

Panels

The Crow's Nest is organized into panels. The landing page — labeled Crow's Nest in the navigation — shows system health stats (CPU, RAM, disk, Docker containers, DB metrics) along with the App Launcher grid.

Messages

View and manage your peer messages. Incoming messages from connected Crow users appear here with read/unread status. You can read threads, mark messages as read, and see message history. The Messages panel also includes an AI Chat tab for conversations with your configured AI provider.

Contacts

Manage your Crow contacts. View all connected contacts with their Crow IDs, online status, and last-seen timestamps. Block or unblock contacts directly from the panel. The Contacts panel also explains how to generate and accept invite codes through your AI.

Memory

Browse and search your stored memories. View memory counts by category, search by content, and see recent memories.

Blog

Manage your blog posts. View drafts and published posts, edit content, publish or unpublish, and see post statistics. The blog panel shows the same data as the crow_list_posts and crow_get_post MCP tools.

Files

Browse your stored files with a visual file browser. Upload new files via drag-and-drop, preview images, copy file URLs, and delete files. Shows storage quota usage.

Extensions

Browse and install community add-ons. Each add-on displays an SVG logo (with emoji fallback for unknown add-ons), description, and action buttons in a card layout. Before installing resource-heavy add-ons, the Extensions page shows a warning with estimated RAM and disk requirements from the add-on manifest.

Podcasts

Subscribe to and listen to podcasts directly in the Crow's Nest:

• Subscribe — Enter an RSS feed URL to add a podcast
• Episode browser — Browse recent episodes across all subscriptions with HTML5 audio player
• Playback tracking — Mark episodes as played/unplayed
• Playlist support — Organize episodes into playlists (via the database — UI coming)
• Feed caching — Episodes are cached locally; feeds refresh on demand or at configurable intervals

Settings

Configure your Crow instance:

• Blog metadata (title, description, author)
• Storage quota
• Network access rules
• Theme preferences (dark/light mode)

Dark and Light Themes

The Crow's Nest uses the Dark Editorial design system. Toggle between dark and light modes using the theme switcher in the top navigation. Your preference is saved in your browser.

Network Security

The Crow's Nest is private by default — think of it like a locked back office. Only connections from trusted networks are allowed:

Network	Range	Who uses this
Localhost	127.0.0.1, ::1	The server itself
LAN (Class A)	10.0.0.0/8	Home/office networks
LAN (Class B)	172.16.0.0/12	Docker, some corporate networks
LAN (Class C)	192.168.0.0/16	Most home routers
Tailscale	100.64.0.0/10	Tailscale VPN (CGNAT range)

If a request comes from an IP outside these ranges, the Crow's Nest returns a 403 Forbidden response. This is intentional — the Crow's Nest has full control over your data and should not be exposed to the public internet.

WARNING

Only set CROW_DASHBOARD_PUBLIC=true if the gateway is behind another authentication layer (e.g., a reverse proxy with HTTP basic auth, Cloudflare Access, or a VPN). Without an additional auth layer, anyone on the internet could access the Crow's Nest with only a password between them and your data.

For remote access without opening the Crow's Nest publicly, use Tailscale. Tailscale IPs fall within the 100.64.0.0/10 range that the Crow's Nest already trusts.

For the full picture of what's public and what's private across Crow, see the Security Guide.

App Launcher

The Crow's Nest landing page includes a Your Apps section that shows launcher tiles for your installed add-ons. Each tile displays:

• SVG logo (48px) — Provided by the add-on, or a fallback initial letter
• Name — The add-on's display name
• Status indicator — A green dot for running containers or a gray dot for stopped ones (Docker-based add-ons only)
• Open button — For add-ons with a web UI (e.g., Nextcloud, Immich), a button that opens the app in a new tab

The launcher reads ~/.crow/installed.json and filters for bundle and mcp-server type add-ons. Docker container status is checked via docker ps --filter with a 30-second cache to avoid repeated shell commands on page load.

Add-ons that declare a webUI field in their manifest (with port, path, and label) get an "Open" button that links to the local web interface.

Third-Party Panels

The Crow's Nest supports add-on panels created by the community. Panels are placed in ~/.crow/panels/ and enabled through a configuration file. Add-ons that include a panel field in their manifest get their panel automatically installed and registered when the add-on is installed, and removed when uninstalled. See Creating Panels for details.