A genuinely turnkey *arr media-automation appliance that auto-WIRES the services together (paths, hardlinks, categories, indexers) — not just one-click-installs the containers and leaves you to connect them

dev tool real project •• multiple requests

Self-hosters repeatedly burn hours trying to get the standard media stack (qBittorrent/Gluetun + Prowlarr + Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr + Jellyfin/Plex) actually talking to each other. Installing the containers is the easy part; the soul-crushing part is the interconnection — consistent volume/path mapping for hardlinks, download categories, indexer wiring, and remote-path mapping. People want an appliance that does the wiring for them and validates it end-to-end, aimed at intermediate users who are not Docker experts.

builder note

The differentiator is a configuration validator/wizard, not another installer. The hard, valuable part is encoding the tribal knowledge — shared hardlink-friendly volume layout, download-client categories, Prowlarr→arr sync, remote path maps — and then actively testing the full grab→import→rename→library chain and surfacing the exact broken link. Ship the diagnostics ('your /downloads path differs between qBit and Sonarr') and you've built what every 'please share a working compose' thread is really begging for.

landscape (3 existing solutions)

One-click install of *arr apps is a solved problem; what is not solved is automatically wiring them together correctly and proving the chain works. Existing tools either assume sysadmin skill (Saltbox) or stop at installation (CasaOS/DockSTARTer), leaving path mapping and indexer/category wiring as the recurring failure point that frustrates non-expert self-hosters.

Saltbox Battle-tested but Ansible-based and opinionated — recommended in the thread yet still demands real Linux/Ansible comfort and a clean VPS; it solves deployment for advanced users, not the wiring-comprehension problem for intermediates.

DockSTARTer / CasaOS / ZimaOS Make installing the individual apps easy (TUI/app-store one-clicks), but the user still has to manually configure the cross-service connections, path consistency, and indexers — which is exactly where people get stuck, including in 2026 guides where 'path mismatch' is still the #1 error.

Yams.media / Dockge / compose generators Guided installers and compose generators reduce friction and hand-hold setup, but none fully auto-detects and validates the interconnections (categories, remote/hardlink path mapping) and tells you what's actually misconfigured — there is no 'it works and here's proof' verification step.

sources (1)

other https://lemmy.world/post/48310412 "6 hours worth of what doesn't work" 2026-06-18

self-hostedarr-stackdockermedia-automationonboarding