Run everything. Watch every host. Prove every change. One Go binary runs Ansible, Terraform, OpenTofu, Bash, PowerShell, Python, and Go across your fleet, paints every run live as a host-by-task matrix instead of a text scroll, splits big jobs across parallel shards, and proves exactly what ran and who approved it. No Kubernetes operator, no Postgres, no Redis, no message bus. One process, one SQLite file.
AWX makes you stand up Kubernetes, Postgres, Redis, and Receptor before it runs a single playbook, and it has not shipped a release since July 2024. Semaphore is lighter, but a run is still a text log. SwitchTender runs the same playbooks from one binary and treats every run as structured data you can read, split, and remember.
| SwitchTender | AWX | Semaphore | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deploy | One binary and one SQLite file, running in seconds. | A Kubernetes operator, Postgres, Redis, and Receptor first. | One binary. |
| Every run | A live host-by-task matrix you read like a dashboard, with per-task drill-down. | A text log you scroll. | A text log you scroll. |
| Big jobs | Sharded across hosts, balanced by their measured duration, only failed shards retried. | Sliced round-robin, with no balancing. | No splitting at all. |
| Memory across runs | Flaky hosts flagged, durations trended, every host's history kept. | Forgotten the moment a run ends. | Forgotten the moment a run ends. |
| Pipelines | A dependency graph with a drag-and-drop editor, passing typed outputs from one step to the next. | A visual workflow builder. | Basic chaining. |
| Leaving your old tool | One command imports your AWX or Semaphore projects, inventories, templates, surveys, and schedules. | Not applicable. | Not applicable. |
The full head-to-head, including where SwitchTender is behind, is in the comparison.
A two-shard split executing live: the merged host matrix fills in as hosts report, one shard fails on the broken database host while the other lands clean, and the timeline draws itself:
Fleet health after a few runs: failure counts, flaky-host detection, and outcome sparklines per host, remembered across every run:
- Ansible on the PATH:
ansible-playbookandansible-inventory. - Go 1.26 to build from source, or the container image and Helm chart to deploy.
- Nothing else for the default SQLite setup. PostgreSQL is optional, for running more than one instance.
Grab a build for your platform from the releases page:
a SwitchTender.dmg for macOS, a windows_amd64.zip for Windows, or a tar.gz of the binary for
macOS and Linux. Or build from source:
go build -o switchtender .
./switchtender serve --addr :8080 --db switchtender.db
Or run it as a local desktop app. On macOS open SwitchTender.app; otherwise one command picks a
stable loopback port, keeps its data in a per-user directory, and opens the UI in your browser:
./switchtender desktop
Open http://localhost:8080 and submit a run:
curl -X POST localhost:8080/runs \
-d '{"playbook": "site.yml", "inventory": "hosts.ini"}'
Add "shards": 4 to split it across four slices of the inventory.
Migrating from AWX or Semaphore is one command. Point it at an export to see what it would create, then apply:
./switchtender import awx awx-export.json # dry-run report
./switchtender import awx awx-export.json --apply # create the objects
Credentials come across as shells. Re-enter their secrets, since exports omit them by design. The switching-from-AWX guide walks the whole move.
To see it without any setup, run the seeded read-only demo. It fills a fresh database with sample projects, templates, and real runs, then serves it with every change blocked:
./switchtender demo --addr :8080 # or: docker compose --profile demo up --build
The docs live in docs/ and also render inside the app at /ui/docs.
| Guide | What |
|---|---|
| Quickstart | Zero to a first run in a few minutes |
| Switching from AWX | Import what you have, or set up from scratch |
| Concepts | Runs, splits, pipelines, projects, templates, and the rest |
| Configuration | Every command, flag, and environment variable |
| Desktop | Run SwitchTender as a local desktop app |
| Features | The full capability list |
| Extend in Go | The SDK: add tools, AI providers, secret engines, and notifiers |
| HTTP API | Every endpoint the server exposes |
| Migration | Moving off AWX or Semaphore in detail |
| Comparison | How SwitchTender compares to AWX and Semaphore |
Deploy with the docker-compose.yml at the root, which brings up a server, a database, and a
worker, or the Helm chart under deploy/helm.
A single-binary monolith on purpose. The serve command hosts the HTTP API, an in-process executor with a bounded worker pool, the cron scheduler, and the embedded UI.
- Storage is SQLite through a pure Go driver in WAL mode. No cgo, one file to back up, and the store sits behind an interface a Postgres backend can satisfy for multi-instance deployments.
- Structured events come from an embedded Ansible callback plugin that writes one JSON object per event to a sidecar file. The dispatcher tails the sidecar as the run executes, storing and publishing events without touching the human-readable log.
- Every run executes under its own cancel context. Canceling a split parent stops all of its shards. Canceling a pipeline stops the current step and halts the sequence.
A switchtender keeps the line: watching every train, holding the lantern, making sure each one runs on time, on the right track, and clear of the next. Good name for the job this tool does, since it watches every host, proves every change, and stands guard over the whole fleet. A few internal packages still carry rail-yard codenames, the roundhouse runs the playbooks and the dispatcher coordinates them, but the API, the UI, and everything you operate speak plain Ansible. No glossary required.
- A hosted option.
- Signed desktop packages for macOS and Windows.
- Broader notification channels beyond webhook, email, and Slack.
Version 1.0. Source-available under the Business Source License 1.1. The execution engine, the
control plane, and the one-command AWX and Semaphore migration are complete. The HTTP API is served
under a stable /v1 base path and follows semantic versioning, so no breaking change lands within
the 1.x line.
Business Source License 1.1. Read the source, run it, and use it in production. The self-hosted binary ships every enterprise feature at no cost: single sign-on, role-based access control, the tamper-evident audit chain, approval gates, and active-active HA. The one reserved right is offering SwitchTender to others as a hosted or managed service that competes with the maintainer. Each version converts to Apache-2.0 four years after its release.
See LICENSE for the exact terms and LICENSING.md for what self-hosting grants,
how a commercial license works, and how to ask about support or a hosted plan.
