Practical overview
When it fits
Use AgentDesk when you want website support conversations, knowledge-based AI responses, human agent operations and ticket tracking in one self-hosted system.
Who it is for
- Support teams handling website or SaaS customer questions
- Organizations that want AI answers grounded in support knowledge with staff escalation
- Teams managing service requests through conversations, ticket assignment and status tracking
- Developers adapting a self-hosted helpdesk or embedding its customer-support experience
Documented uses
- Answer common customer questions using FAQs, documents and other retrievable knowledge.
- Escalate a conversation to a human when a customer asks, knowledge is insufficient or a workflow needs confirmation.
- Manage conversations, assign or transfer them, and link customers to support records.
- Create, categorize, assign and track tickets through status changes and progress records.
- Configure models and knowledge sources for scenario-specific support agents.
Requirements & limits
The project is open-source under the Apache-2.0 license. Its documented Docker Compose setup provides a default administrator account; change the default password before exposing the system to the public internet or a team environment.
- The Answerability Gate is intended to route unsupported knowledge-based questions toward fallback and human support.
- The documented model configuration supports OpenAI-compatible providers and separate language, embedding and reranking model settings.
- The system supports SQLite or MySQL and uses Qdrant for vector search.
- Docker Compose starts the application with MySQL and Qdrant; local development additionally requires Go 1.26+, Node.js 20+, pnpm and Qdrant.
- The repository documents a web widget integration path for adding customer support to a website.
Check current requirements in the official documentation. Source-based guidance does not mean OpenViST has run or independently tested this project.
Prepare AgentDesk for local development
Prepare the configuration and frontend dependencies, then start the backend and frontend development servers.
Before you start
- Go 1.26 or later
- Node.js 20 or later
- pnpm
- Qdrant
Steps
Copy the example configuration with
cp config/config.example.yaml config/config.yaml.If Qdrant is not running locally, start it with the command below.
docker run -p 6333:6333 -p 6334:6334 qdrant/qdrantInstall frontend dependencies by running
cd web,pnpm install, andcd ...Start both development servers with
task dev, then use the listed development URLs, such ashttp://localhost:3000/dashboardorhttp://localhost:3000/support/chat.
Expected outcome
The project’s local development servers are started, with dashboard, agent workspace, and customer chat URLs listed in the README.
Guide limitations
- The README lists Qdrant as a requirement and gives a Docker command only for the case where it is not already running locally.
- This guide covers local development setup, not production deployment or model-provider configuration.
Sources & review
Source record details
- Source availability
- Active
- Sources checked
- 12 October 2026
- Original website title
- huabeitech/agent-desk · Official homepage title · retained in its source language

