Upgrading Genfeed

You run the updates for your own instance. Each release is a new application image; on startup the container applies database migrations and reconciles reference data before it serves traffic.

Before you upgrade

Back up two things.

1. PostgreSQL. Use your own POSTGRES_USER and POSTGRES_DB if you changed them from the defaults:


docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml exec -T postgres \
  pg_dump -U genfeed genfeed > genfeed-backup.sql

2. The /data volume. It holds generated files, the embedded Redis, and the generated secrets (/data/.encryption-key and, if you enabled the login wall, /data/.better-auth-secret). Stored credentials cannot be decrypted without the encryption key. Find the volume name with docker volume ls (it starts with your Compose project name, by default the directory name), then:


docker run --rm -v VOLUME_NAME:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/genfeed-data.tgz -C /data .

Also keep a copy of your .env.

Then read the upgrade notes for the releases between your version and the new one.

Move to a newer release

Release bundles pin the application image for their release through GENFEED_IMAGE_TAG in .env.

Download the newer release bundle and read its .env.example. Note the GENFEED_IMAGE_TAG value it sets.
In your existing .env, set GENFEED_IMAGE_TAG to that value. Keep your other settings.

From the directory you started the stack in, pull the image and recreate the container:


docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml pull
docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml up -d

Starting the new bundle from a different directory would create a different Compose project, with new empty volumes. Update in place as above, or keep the old project name with -p.

If you run from a source checkout’s docker/docker-compose.selfhosted.yml, the template uses the latest image tag, so the same pull and up -d fetch the newest image.

Check the result:


docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml ps
docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml logs genfeed
curl http://localhost:3010/v1/health

Roll back

Migrations are applied on startup and are not reversed automatically. To roll back, stop the stack, restore the PostgreSQL dump and /data backup you took before upgrading, set GENFEED_IMAGE_TAG back to the previous release, and start it again.

Stop the stack


docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml down

Add -v only when you intentionally want to delete the database and Genfeed data volumes.

Upgrade notes

20260925120000_agent_unit_economics adds a nullable userId column to llm_vendor_costs, creates the billing_revenue_events table, and builds new indexes on credit_transactions, llm_vendor_costs, and media_vendor_costs. The indexes are not built concurrently, so writes to those tables wait while each index builds. This is brief on most installs; on a large database, update during a quiet period.