celld is an open-source daemon that lets you run Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects on your own machines, with each object backed by its own SQLite database and coordinated through a bucket you control.
celld is a self-hosted runtime for Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects. It is described as a distributed system where each durable object maps to its own SQLite database, and the fleet of nodes shares a storage bucket that holds deployments, object state, and small ownership records. The project provides a binary, an install script, and a container image, and it documents how to deploy and operate a fleet against S3-compatible storage or Google Cloud Storage.
The project targets the challenge of running Durable Objects outside Cloudflare while preserving the object-oriented sharding model that makes each object isolated and small. Its design also avoids relying on a separate control plane, membership service, or consensus system, which simplifies operation and reduces the blast radius of failures that would otherwise affect a shared database.
Conceptually, each celld node embeds V8, loads Wrangler bundles, and works against a single shared bucket that acts as the durable source of truth. The bucket stores deployments, object state, and ownership metadata; object-storage compare-and-swap is used so only one node owns a cell at a time. Nodes replicate each cell's SQLite database back to the bucket, and when ownership changes or an inactive cell becomes active again, the new owner restores that database and continues execution.
It is gaining attention because it offers a practical path to self-hosting a Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects style platform, and the repository shows strong recent interest with 3,558 stars and 1,549 stars added this week. The README also emphasizes straightforward installation, container deployment, and operational tooling, which likely makes it appealing to people exploring portable edge-style infrastructure.
The README does not name direct alternatives, but it does clearly position celld against running on Cloudflare itself and against architectures that depend on a separate control plane or consensus service. In practical terms, comparable approaches would be other self-hosted distributed runtimes or object-based systems, but the provided material does not identify specific projects by name.
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