Nightship moves your in-development builds from CI to every machine that needs them — testers, artists, producers, publishers. Push to a channel; a small client in the system tray keeps every subscribed machine current, automatically — then it's the app your team opens to run the build, one click, with the right settings already baked in.
Steam ships to players — with a Play button. Nightship ships to your team — with a Run button.
$ nightship push ./cooked-build --channel nightly Pushing 1,283 files as build 20260809-231400 ... Channel 'nightly' now at build 20260809-231400 $ nightship promote qa --from nightly Channel 'qa' now at build 20260809-231400 (from 'nightly') # meanwhile, on every subscribed machine: 🔔 Nightship — synced build 20260809-231400 → C:\builds\qa
Built by game developers who were tired of “which build is current?” — designed for any team that ships desktop software to itself.
Push to nightly, promote to qa, roll back with one command. A channel is a pointer to an immutable build — promoting and reverting are instant, atomic, and auditable.
Follow as many channels as you like — nightly, RC, and last-known-good coexist in separate directories. Reproduce “broke between build 44 and 47” without re-downloading a thing.
Nightship isn't just the pipe — it's the app testers open to launch the build. Admins define per-channel launch targets (the button label is the command — “Run”, “Run QA Windowed”); users add their own flags, pin favourites, and get a one-click “Restart to update” when a new build lands.
Nightship lives in the system tray and just works: staged downloads, atomic swaps, and lock-aware updates that wait politely while your build is running — then finish themselves. Your team sees a notification, not a workflow.
Integration is one CLI line in any pipeline — GitHub Actions, Jenkins, TeamCity, GitLab: nightship push ./out --channel nightly. Token auth, --json output, honest exit codes. No plugins to install, nothing to babysit.
Assign channels to groups; members' machines subscribe automatically. Onboarding a tester is one invite code: nightship join and their machine follows the right builds.
One self-contained server binary. A workstation, a LAN box, your own VPS — no database server, no cloud dependency, air-gap friendly. Your builds never have to leave your infrastructure.
Every feature is a CLI verb against a documented OpenAPI interface — --json everywhere, honest exit codes, CI-friendly tokens. The UI is a convenience, never a requirement.
Signed binaries, hashed credentials, role-based access, single-use invites. Every download hash-verified before it is activated.
Content-defined chunking tuned for game engines — so successive builds move in megabytes, not gigabytes. The architecture is ready; fidelity upgrades arrive invisibly.
Distribution is the plumbing. The Run button is the daily surface — the reason testers, QA, and artists open Nightship every day, not a background task they forget about.
Three verbs. That's the whole mental model.
nightship push ./out --channel nightly — from your pipeline or your terminal. Builds are immutable and finalized atomically; no torn syncs, ever.
nightship promote qa --from nightly when QA should get what nightly proved. Rollback is the same command aimed at an older build.
Subscribed machines notice, download to staging, verify, and swap — automatically. A tray notification is the only thing your team sees.
No database to install, no cloud account to create, no onboarding meetings.
One self-contained binary: nightshipd. First start prints your admin token. A workstation or any LAN box is enough.
nightship invite create anna --groups team — one single-use code per person, shared however you already chat.
nightship join <server> <code> — their machine subscribes to the right channels automatically, and the tray client takes it from there. Forever.
The same product, wherever it serves you best — and moving between the two is copying a directory, in either direction.
We run the servers, you push builds. Zero ops, zero maintenance — the easy default for teams who want build distribution, not infrastructure. Beta teams start here.
One self-contained binary on your own hardware — office LAN, private VPS, even air-gapped networks. Nothing phones home. Built for studios whose builds must never leave the building.
No lock-in, by construction: your entire account exports as a plain folder that a self-hosted server reads directly. Leave our cloud — or join it — whenever you choose.
$ nightshipd --data-dir /srv/nightship nightshipd 0.3.0 listening on http://0.0.0.0:8080 FIRST START - admin token created ... $ curl -s https://builds.example.com/api/docs # every server documents its own API
We are onboarding a small number of teams — game studios first, all builders welcome.
Tell us about your team and your build pipeline.
No account, no tracking, no newsletter — just an email conversation.