Connect a real panel.

The panel ships as a Docker image. On Windows or macOS install Docker Desktop and make sure it's running (whale icon in the system tray).

On a Linux host the upstream one-liner is:

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | CHANNEL=stable sudo sh

A ready-to-run compose file lives at docker-compose.pelican.yml in the project root — it mirrors the official compose.yml in the upstream repo. From a terminal in the project folder:

docker compose -f docker-compose.pelican.yml up -d

Or, copy this compose file into a fresh folder and run it from there:

services:
  panel:
    image: ghcr.io/pelican-dev/panel:latest
    container_name: pelican
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    environment:
      APP_URL: "http://localhost"
      APP_DEBUG: "false"
      APP_ENV: "production"
      XDG_DATA_HOME: /pelican-data
      MAIL_DRIVER: "log"
    volumes:
      - "pelican-data:/pelican-data"
      - "pelican-logs:/var/www/html/storage/logs"

volumes:
  pelican-data:
  pelican-logs:

If host port 80 is already in use, change the mapping to "8080:80" AND set APP_URL: "http://localhost:8080" so the panel knows its own external URL. Restart with the sameup -d command.

Open http://localhost:8080/installer (the in-repo compose maps to 8080; if you changed the host port or used the upstream 80:80 mapping, adjust accordingly). Step through the on-screen installer — it sets up the database, generates the app encryption key, and prompts you to create the first admin user.

⚠ Save the encryption key shown during install (Pelican's docs flag it as the value used to encrypt every stored secret). If you lose it, stored tokens become unrecoverable.

Logged in as the admin user you just created, in the panel UI:

• Top-right avatar → Account Settings
• Side nav → API Credentials
• Create (top right)
• Description: Play Your Way
• Allowed IPs: leave blank for local dev; lock to your site's egress IP in production
• Create

Copy the key shown — it starts with ptlc_ and Pelican only displays it once. The ptla_ keys under Admin → Application API are a different scope and won't work with this site — make sure you grabbed a ptlc_ one.

Create a file called .env.local in the project root (same folder as package.json) with:

PANEL_URL=http://localhost:8080
PANEL_CLIENT_API_KEY=ptlc_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

No quotes around the values, no spaces around =, no trailing slash on PANEL_URL. The file is gitignored — your key never ends up in the repo. Restart npm run dev after creating the file so Next.js picks the new env vars up.

The panel is the control plane; Wings is the Linux daemon that runs the actual game-server containers. Until a Wings node is registered with the panel, "deploying" a server from the dashboard has nowhere to land.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/pelican /var/run/wings

sudo curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/wings \
  "https://github.com/pelican-dev/wings/releases/latest/download/wings_linux_$([[ \"$(uname -m)\" == \"x86_64\" ]] && echo \"amd64\" || echo \"arm64\")"

sudo chmod u+x /usr/local/bin/wings

sudo wings --debug

[Unit]
Description=Wings Daemon
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service
PartOf=docker.service

[Service]
User=root
WorkingDirectory=/etc/pelican
LimitNOFILE=4096
PIDFile=/var/run/wings/daemon.pid
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/wings
Restart=on-failure
StartLimitInterval=180
StartLimitBurst=30
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable --now wings