Minimal OCI Orchestration

Container runtime
without the weight.

nyxd is a Linux-native OCI orchestrator built on crun. Zero Docker. Zero containerd. Just a clean control plane you actually understand.

Get started API reference GitHub

nyxd

# install
make build && sudo install nyxd /usr/local/bin

# start daemon
sudo nyxd --base-dir=/var/lib/nyxd

# run a container
nyx run -d nginx:alpine

# list running containers
nyx ps

crunOCI Runtime

nativeDefault network

no-depsDocker / Podman

arm64Also supported

Everything you need. Nothing you don't.

A focused feature set for operators who want predictable container orchestration on bare Linux hosts.

RUNTIMENo container runtime stack

nyxd calls crun directly. No Docker daemon, no containerd shim, no unnecessary overhead on your host.

Read section NETWORKIn-process networking

Native bridge + IPAM + nftables NAT runs fully inside nyxd — no CNI binaries required unless you want them.

Read section COMPOSECompose-compatible workflow

nyx compose up parses a Compose subset — services, env, mounts, depends_on, health checks — no Docker needed.

Read section SUPERVISORSupervisor + restart policies

nyxd supervises containers with configurable restart policies and reconciles state after an unclean shutdown.

Read section APIREST control plane

All operations are available via a Unix-socket HTTP API fully documented as an OpenAPI 3 spec.

Read section SECURITYSecure by default

NoNewPrivileges, minimal capabilities, masked /proc, per-container network namespace, digest verification on every pull.

Read section

Ready to ditch the daemon stack?

Read the install guide and have nyxd running in under five minutes on any capable Linux host.

Install nyxd View source