Operational: Open Source Messaging & Event Streaming

What is Operational?

What it is

Operational is an open-source event tracking and notification tool for technology products. It lives in the Node.js ecosystem and is distributed as a monorepo containing a Vue 3 single-page application, an Express backend, an Astro marketing website, and a shared packages folder published to npm. The runtime stack is Node.js 18 or newer, MySQL 8.x, and Prisma as the data layer, with ClickHouse supported as an optional addition. The project is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and its topics list places it in the self-hosted, SaaS, PWA, and push-notification space.

The concrete problem it solves is that product teams generate streams of discrete signals — signups, incoming webhooks, cronjob runs — but lack a single place that surfaces them in real time and pushes the important ones to a person's device. Operational receives those events, groups related ones into contexts (events inside events), and delivers push notifications to a phone or web application when something needs attention. It also lets an operator attach action buttons to an event so that a webhook can be triggered in response, turning observation into a response action rather than a passive log view.

Key capabilities

Push notifications for critical events delivered to a phone or to the web application.
Monitoring of critical events such as signups, webhooks, and cronjobs.
Action buttons attached to events that trigger outbound webhooks.
Contexts, which nest events inside other events to express complex or multi-step activity.
Progressive web app support, so the interface is usable on mobile and can receive mobile push notifications.
Event payloads can carry JSON and formatted JSON, and logs can be bundled into contexts.
Self-hosting across multiple targets, from Render.com deployments to Docker images, with video guides.

Who uses it and how

Swipekit's Facebook ad library tool runs Operational in production, according to the README.
youtubedescriptionextractor runs Operational in production as well.
A live demo account receives test events so the notification flow can be observed before installation.
Teams self-host the stack on their own VPS, selecting a deployment method from Render.com through Docker images.
Operators retain visibility of events from the web application while push notifications cover the mobile case.
The Discord server serves as the community channel for updates, feedback, and support requests.

Getting started

Two paths exist: the hosted service

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Website | Docs | Self-hosting | Pitch | Vision

Operational.co is a open-source Event tracking tool. Monitor signups, webhooks, cronjobs and more.

Currently Swipekit Facebook ad library tool and youtubedescriptionextractor are using this in production.

🔍 View Live Demo - See Operational in action with a demo account receiving test events.

Operational Event tracker

✨ Key Features

Get push notifications for critical events straight to your phone, or on the webapp
Monitor critical events
Trigger webhooks via action buttons
Understand complex events via contexts(events-in-events)
Usable on mobile as a progressive web app(can receive push notifications on mobile too)
Built for tech products

🚀 Getting Started

There are two ways to start using Operational:

Option	Description
Hosted Service	Fastest way to get started
Self-Hosting	Deploy and manage Operational on your own VPS

📚 Explore our documentation to learn more about setup and usage.

🪄 Highlights

Heaps of self-hosting options, from Render.com to docker images, with video guides. We want you to self-host!
Very few 3rd party dependencies. No need to install clickhouse in the open source version.
Feature packed. Send json, formatted json, bundle up logs in contexts, add action buttons, and more.
Easy to grok and tear apart - no useless dependencies, nor unnecessarily complex code.

🏡 Community

We have a active Discord community. We highly recommend jumping on our Discord server for updates, feedback and help.

⛏️ Contributing to Operational

How to contribute?

👩‍🔬 Technology

Operational has a dead-simple tech stack:

Nodejs >=18
Mysql 8.x
Prismajs
Clickhouse(optional)
Expressjs 5.x
Vue 3
Vite

Operational itself is a monorepo of 3 repos:

/app the SPA for operational.co
/backend the expressjs app powering the backend
/website astrojs marketing website
/packages folder has public npm packages which are shared across all repos.

Bootstrap article

Use the article bootstrap command to create a new draft blog post and its banner assets.

Required env var:

OPENROUTER_API_KEY

The command reads OPENROUTER_API_KEY from website/.env first, then falls back to your shell environment.

Examples:

npm --workspace website run bootstrap-article -- --title="My Article Title"
npm --workspace website run bootstrap-article -- --slug="my-article-slug"
npm --workspace website run bootstrap-article -- --title="My Article Title" --slug="my-article-slug"

What it creates:

website/src/content/blog/{slug}.md
website/public/images/blog/{slug}/banner.png
website/public/images/blog/{slug}/banner-og.jpg

Behavior:

If only title is passed, the script slugifies it and uses that for the article slug.
If only slug is passed, the script de-slugs it into a readable title.
If both are passed, the script keeps the provided title and slug.
The article is created as a draft with starter content.
The script stops without overwriting anything if the target article already exists.

Frequently asked questions

Is Operational free to use?

Operational is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Operational do?

Real-time event tracking and response for tech products

What is Operational written in?

Operational is primarily written in Vue. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/operational-co/operational.co, and it has 477 GitHub stars.