repowiseThe intelligence engine is one codebase. Self-hosted and hosted run the same Python: same parsers, same git analysis, same wiki generation, same MCP tools. Pick whichever fits your team.
Side-by-side
| Self-hosted | Hosted (repowise.dev) | |
|---|---|---|
| Install | pip install repowise | None: sign in with GitHub |
| Storage | Local SQLite + LanceDB under .repowise/ | Managed by Repowise |
| MCP server | Local stdio process | Hosted HTTP endpoint per repo, callable from any editor |
| Auto-sync | Hooks, watch, your own webhook server | GitHub App push-sync (automatic) |
| Multi-repo workspaces | Yes | Yes |
| Cross-repo intelligence | Yes (per workspace, over MCP and the dashboard) | Yes (per workspace, in the dashboard's federated workspace chat) |
| Dashboard | repowise serve on localhost:3000 | repowise.dev/dashboard |
| Auth | None (local) | Sign in with GitHub or an email link |
| Team features | Not available | Seats & roles, pooled repos/credits, shared workspaces, portfolio health & ownership, engineering-leader dashboard |
| Billing | Free, AGPL | Free / Pro / Teams / Enterprise |
| GitHub App for private repos | Not available | One-click installer |
| Security suite | Local pattern scan | Full suite: CVE scanning + reachability triage, secrets across git history, SBOM/VEX, nightly refresh, compliance reports, audit trail |
| Alerting | Not available | Bell + email + signed Slack-compatible webhooks for security events and engineering signals |
| PR review bot | Not available | Blast-radius + reviewer suggestions on pull requests |
| Privacy | Code never leaves your machine; LLM calls use your own key | Code is cloned into a short-lived container and deleted after each index; only derived data is stored (how Hosted handles data); LLM calls run on the platform's key, paid from credits |
| Hosted-only analysis | Not available | Semantic search and docs explorer (free on every plan), coverage page, federated workspace chat |
Same agent experience
Whichever you pick, your AI agent gets:
- The same MCP tools.
- The same proactive
PreToolUse/PostToolUsehooks (if you're using Claude Code). - The same auto-generated
CLAUDE.md(withgenerate-claude-mdon self-hosted, automatic on hosted).
Both can answer across a workspace over MCP. A self-hosted server
started over a workspace takes a repo argument, and a few tools
accept repo="all" to merge across the workspace; see
Workspace MCP mode. Hosted has a
read-only workspace URL on Pro and Teams; see
Connecting your IDE.
Pick self-hosted if
- Your code can't leave your network.
- You're an individual or small team and don't want a billing relationship.
- You want full control over the LLM provider, model, and embedding pipeline.
- You're comfortable with a Python install and one of the auto-sync options.
Pick hosted if
- You want zero ops: managed indexing, managed webhooks, push-sync.
- You want managed multi-repo workspaces and federated workspace chat without running the indexing yourself.
- You want the security suite: CVE scanning with reachability triage, secret detection across git history, SBOM/VEX, nightly refresh, compliance reports, audit trail.
- You're running a team: seats and roles, pooled repos and credits, portfolio health and ownership rollups, and the engineering-leader dashboard with drift alerting into Slack.
- You want the hosted analysis pages (semantic search and the docs explorer are free on every plan; coverage and federated chat come with a paid plan) and the PR review bot.
Hybrid is fine. Run self-hosted on a laptop for one private repo and hosted for everything else. Same MCP protocol, same tool names. Your agent doesn't care which server answers.
One engine, no fork
The hosted dashboard is built from the same UI and type packages the OSS web UI uses, and it runs the same engine. There's no fork: both modes share it.