<p>Deploy OpenHands Agent Canvas, an open-source self-hosted control center for AI coding agents and automations. Run agents on your Droplet, connect from the browser, and optionally use DigitalOcean Gradient AI for inference.</p>
<h2 id="what-is-openhands">What is OpenHands?</h2>
<p>OpenHands is the open platform for cloud coding agents. Agent Canvas is the self-hosted developer control center: start conversations, run automations, and work with OpenHands or other ACP-compatible agents across local and remote backends.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Self-hosted</strong> – Agents and settings stay on your Droplet</li>
<li><strong>Browser UI</strong> – Agent Canvas on your droplet IP (Caddy reverse proxy)</li>
<li><strong>Public mode</strong> – Protected by a generated API key (<code>LOCAL_BACKEND_API_KEY</code>)</li>
<li><strong>DigitalOcean Gradient AI</strong> – Optional one-key setup for OpenAI-compatible models</li>
<li><strong>Workspace</strong> – Projects under <code>/home/openhands/projects</code></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="key-features">Key Features</h2>
<ul>
<li>Always-on agent backend for coding tasks and automations</li>
<li>Web UI with API-key gate for internet-facing deployments</li>
<li>Optional Gradient model access key configuration at first login</li>
<li>Helper scripts for start/stop/restart/status/update and custom domain TLS</li>
<li>Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with UFW and fail2ban</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="system-requirements">System Requirements</h2>
<p>OpenHands Agent Canvas runs the agent server on the host. Prefer at least 4 GB RAM.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th id="use_case">Use Case</th>
<th id="ram">RAM</th>
<th id="cpu">CPU</th>
<th id="storage">Storage</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Minimum (single user)</td>
<td>4 GB</td>
<td>2 vCPU</td>
<td>50 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Recommended</td>
<td>8 GB</td>
<td>4 vCPU</td>
<td>100 GB</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 id="included-system-components">Included System Components</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Ubuntu 24.04 LTS</strong></li>
<li><strong>OpenHands Agent Canvas</strong></li>
<li><strong>Node.js</strong> and <strong>uv</strong></li>
<li><strong>Caddy</strong> reverse proxy (ports 80/443 → Agent Canvas on localhost:8000)</li>
<li><strong>UFW</strong> and <strong>fail2ban</strong></li>
<li>Dedicated <strong><code>openhands</code></strong> system user</li>
</ul>

NodeJS

fail2ban

caddy

OpenHands Agent Canvas

Agent Canvas is an open-source, self-hosted control center for AI coding agents and automations. This builder creates an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Droplet with Agent Canvas pre-installed, running in public mode behind Caddy, with optional DigitalOcean Gradient AI configuration

DigitalOcean

OpenHands

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Description

Software Included

Getting started after deploying OpenHands

API Creation